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ENTRANCE TO THE STICKEEN RIVER. 



OUR NEW ALASKA; 



OR, 



THE SEWARD PURCHASE VINDICATED. 



CHARLES HALLOCK, 

AUTHOR OF THE "FISHING TOURIST," "SPORTSMAN'S 
GAZETTEER," "CAMP LIFE IN FLORIDA," ETC. 



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b° 



ILLUSTRATED FROM SKETCHES BY 
PROF. T, J. RICHARDSON. 









NEW YORK : 
FOREST AND STREAM PUBLISHING CO., 

188.6. 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1886, by 

FOREST AND STREAM PUBLISHING CO., 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 






PREFACE. 



" Man has not found Alaska yet," says Edwards Roberts 
in the Overland Monthly. " Alone in the North she rests 
upon the bosom of her seas, waiting patiently for her 
deliverance." 

The special object of this book is to point out the visible 
resources of that far off territory, and to assist their lag- 
gard development; to indicate to those insufficiently 
informed the economic value of important industries 
hitherto almost neglected, which are at once available for 
immediate profit; to elucidate the vexed problem of labor 
supply; to impress upon Congress the advantage, as well 
as the duty, of providing proper protection for the 
people, and granting them representation through a chosen 
delegate, who shall be competent and conscientious to 
instruct and advise, and efficient to push their claims and 
their necessities, so that they may voice the needs of this 
great integer of the republic, and contribute without let or 
hindrance to its wealth and prosperity ; and finally to prove 
conclusively that the " Seward Purchase " was not so bad a 
bargain after all. At the same time attention is directed to 
those extraordinary physical phenomena whose marvelous 
combination makes Alaska the most attractive region in the 
world for sojourners and summer tourists. I would fain 
divert a portion of the travel which habitually goes to 
Europe to this new field of commerce and adventure. I 
would popularize home excursions among our votaries of 
fashion — Yosemite, Alaska, and the Yellowstone — as the 
primary and proper thing to " do " before attempting the 
Old World tour ; and so make it incumbent upon every 
American citizen, who would claim consideration abroad, 
to be duly accredited at the home office as competent to 
travel. 

Hitherto our new possession has seemed almost a myth 
too vague and intangible to tempt even the Argonauts. 
Like an unexpected legacy, its magnificence and value have 
not yet been comprehended; but the time is close at hand 



" PREFACE. 

when her mighty forests«will yield their treasures, her mines 
will open out their richness, her seas will give of their 
abundance, and all her quiet coves will be converted into 
busy harbors. Hgr_grassy islands, her rounded foot-hills 
and her bounteous table-lands will pasture goodly herds, 
and her exuberant soil teem with vegetables and fruit. The 
gelid out-put from her glacier fronts — the crystal ice-floes 
which fill her most sequestered channels — will be harvested 
where they float, for transportation to the semi-torrid lati- 
tudes below; pleasure yachts will thread the intricacies of 
her studded islands, and no retreat for invalids and summer 
saunterers will be half so popular. Already the vibrations of 
the pending boom begin to agitate the air. The favorable 
reports of government explorers sent out to investigate the 
interior as well as the coast, are re-assuring. Letters of 
inquiry from intending settlers come from every section. 
Official departments are getting down to systematic work. 
New industries have been established within the present 
year. Capital will no longer be withheld grudgingly from 
enterprises waiting to be developed ; and by the time this 
book is ready to leave the press, a tide of emigration will 
set strongly in the direction of the Aleutian Isles. 

Talk of the sterility of Alaska, and its inhospitable soil ! 
Why there are eleven kinds of edible berries which mature 
in August, and strawberries grow in lavish profusion right 
under_the breadth of the glacier fields" in latitude sixty 
degrees. The mightiest giant of our eastern pineries is 
but a pigmy in diameter beside the average conifer of 
Alaska, where the undergrowth is so dense, and the " slash " 
so intricate, below the snow-line, that progress through it is 
almost impossible, and three miles a day is a difficult feat 
to accomplish. 

Alaska has been egregiously misconceived, maligned and 
misrepresented. The very encomiums which enraptured 
tourists have bestowed upon her Alpine scenery, have served 
to discourage settlement or adventure; men forgetting that 
the forbidding Alps do not constitute the whole of Switzer- 
land. Frigid impressions of her climate and agricultural 
capabilities have been reflected from her glacier fields and 
snow-clad peaks. Beneath her dazzling drapery fancy 
apprehended a stark dead body instead of a living force. 
What poets admire to paint as " The land of the midnight 
sun," matter-of-fact folks accept as the polar world. And 
so Alaska is misjudged. 

Alaska has been belied. Not only are her marvelous 
resources generally ignored, but they have been systemati- 



PREFACE. Ill 

cally and semi-officially denied. Authentic statements of 
disinterested investigators have been sedulously contra- 
dicted in the interest of parties whom it paid to keep the 
possibilities of the country close. It was so during the 
Russian occupation, and has been so ever since, and from 
kindred motives. No conscientious person ever dared 
affirm that the country was absolutely worthless; that a 
region with 2,000 miles of breadth and 25,000 miles of coast 
line (!) had absolutely nothing in it worth having; but the 
Russian government, which yielded its prerogatives to the 
fur companies, couid itself get nothing out of it, and so, 
perhaps, it came to be for sale. Only within a few years 
past has the light of truth begun to gleam steadfastly 
through the fog, inasmuch as the country had been pre- 
viously inaccessible to us; but now, with a regular bi- 
monthly steamer to principal ports, and the omnipotent fact 
published broadcast by the Sitka paper, that milk is sold at 
ten- cents a quart, and lettuce is given away in the local 
market, some caution must be observed in pronouncing the 
territory valueless, incapable and agriculturally worthless. 
The scope and fitness of Alaska for agriculture and stock 
raising are not yet recognized, simply because they have not 
been extensively tested. 

The illimitable wheat region of the British North-west, 
once supposed to be a desert, it has been proved can feed 
the world. The intense cold of winter, instead of being a 
drawback, acts in the farmer's interest. The deeper the 
frost goes the better. As it thaws out gradually in the 
summer, it loosens the sub-soil and sends up the needed 
moisture to the roots of the grain. The Canadian explorers 
in Rupert's Sound, in the interest of a railway to Hudson's 
Bay, claim that the country is not only densely forested but 
contains valleys and plains which promise rich wheat, 
harvests when once they shall have come under cultivation. 
The interior of Alaska seems to be equally assuring, since 
all the witnesses in nature, there indigenous, rise up and 
testify to it. The geese which fly north in April and return 
in November, the grouse which brood in May, the flowers 
which bloom in June, the uncounted herds of caribou, the 
abundance of moose, bears, mountain goats, birds and 
other animal life, the exuberance of wild fruits and forest 
growth, the expansive prairies and moss-covered plains, and 
the almost tropical heat of mid-summer, all attest the 
presence of conditions, climatic and otherwise, upon which 
to predicate deductions altogether favorable. 

And Alaska " is waiting for deliverance." She holds her 



IV PREFACE. 

arms outstretched, and her lap rilled with offerings, bidding 
us come and take them as our recompense, if we will but 
set her free from isolation and introduce her to the com- 
mercial world. 

My unpretentious sketch may not add any great amount 
of information to what has already been written of this 
strange country, but what I have contributed is mainly from 
my own personal observation, unaided by reports and 
reference books, which I have purposely refrained from con- 
sulting. Its south-western coast line for a distance of one 
thousand miles has become already pretty well known, and 
is now being thoroughly surveyed by the government. My 
illustrations show some of its characteristics. It will take 
years to develop its visible resources, to say nothing of 
those which do not yet appear ; and, therefore, we need not 
care at present to speculate much upon what lies inland, 
back of the coast range. It is better to utilize the oppor- 
tunities at hand than to search for others which may not 
exist. The territory is vast, and centuries of systematic 
investigation will hardly suffice to reveal its fullest capa- 
bilities. Population will penetrate into the interior as soon 
as economic industries are fairly introduced along the sea- 
board, and if there be any land fit for cultivation it will be 
promptly brought into requisition to supply local demands. 
Those who know, and have. raised fine potatoes one hundred 
and fifty miles up the Stickeen River, which matured in 
August, affirm that Alaska can supply her home people from 
the" Outset, and pari passu with their numerical increase, 
with fresh meat, and vegetables, game and berries, fish and 
dairy products, leaving the lower latitudes to supply the 
cereals and groceries. If minerals are found as widely 
distributed as indications suggest, the process of develop- 
ment and occupation will be rapid. Upon the whole, our 
people have shown considerable energy in taking hold to 
make something of what appeared to be "no good." They 
have done fairly well with their cumbersome acquisition, 
and events are likely to prove that the " Seward Purchase " 
was not only dirt cheap, but a remunerative investment. 

I am pleased to add that the pages of this volume have 
been read by the specialists of the Smithsonian Institution 
and by the government officials most familiar with Alaska, 
and by them approved. 

Charles Hallock. 
Washington, D. C, 
April 13, 1886. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 



Itinerary of the Trip. — Excursion routes — Interesting overland 
trip — Luxurious coast voyage — Canadian Pacific and Northern 
Pacific — A superb thoroughfare — The Columbia river country — 
A smoky atmosphere — A big breakfast — Superabundance of 
the Pacific coast — Glimpse of Mt. Hood — Puget Sound — Vic- 
toria — Indian camp — Policy toward the Indian population — 
Chinese thrift — A new deal for John — Pigtails no more, - - 9 

CHAPTER II. 

Itinerary Continued. — At Sea — Ox-tail soup — Enchantment 
begins — Delectable views — Mountains and maelstroms — A dan- 
gerous strait — Fog whistles — Kinship of fellowship — A training 
school for bears — Indian civilization — High-toned Hydahs — A 
missionary's ideal — Curious houses —Exquisite ware — Customs 
without duties — Holding the mirror up to nature — Nautical 
diaries — Salt-water confidences — A hasty burial — Suicide of a 
rooster — Totem poles — An old trading post — Native sculpture — 
Magnificent scenery — An old smuggler — U . S. surveys — Count- 
less salmon — A live town — Gold in sight — Native villages — 
Negro settlers — A community of " traveling men " — Destruct- 
ive teredo — Devils' club — Salmon canneries — The furthest point 
north, --_---_..-- ig 

CHAPTER III. 

As Excursionists See It. — Very salubrious — No mosquitoes — 
Always cool — A 2,000 mile excursion — A new creation — Archi- 
pelago of mountains — Snow clad peaks — Whales in landlocked 
basins — Giant kelp — Salt-water pyrotechnics — Blanket-sail and 
paddle — Jelly-fish — A symphony of surf — A stretch of rough 
water — Clouds and fog — Reduplicated wonders — Arctic and 
tropical paradoxes, ---------36 

CHAPTER IV. 

Economically Considered. — The " American Desert" reclaimed 
— " Bad Lands " not so bad — The fruitful Northwest — Chinook 
winds — Appearances which mislead — Frigid regions which are 
sometimes hot — Ocean currents — The Kuro-Siwo — Ice as a 
fertilizer — Rank vegetation — Agricultural capabilities — Small 
native fruits — Stock ranges — Wintering stock — Dairy products — 



VI. CONTENTS. 

Beet sugar — Prices current — A big timber preserve — Three 
hundred million acres — Arctic for ests — Forest fires — Indian 
smoke signals — Commercial woods — Their relative value — The 
great fur land — Native middle men — An unworked region — 
Mineral resources — Seal fisheries — Commercial fisheries — Can- 
dle fish — Rock cod — A hospitable fishing ground — Atlantic 
fishermen — Invited west — Opportunities lying idle — Canadian 
example — Alaska neglected — Two negro men of nerve — Private 
enterprise — Future prospects, - - - - - - - 40 

CHAPTER V. 

An Interior View. — Early settlements — Interior trading-posts — 
Russian and English occupation — Suggestions for profitable 
exploration — Government expeditions — Newspaper statements 
misleading — Intentional misrepresentations — Settlement dis- 
couraged — Schwatka's Yukon journey — Interior tribes and settle- 
ments — The interior defined — Fluvial geography — Grass prairie- s 
and tundras — Subsoil irrigation — Herds of cariboo and moose — 
Luxuriant vegetation — Glacial action — Gold deposits — The 
Yukon delta — Esquimo — Immunities of the coast - - - 66 

CHAPTER VI. 

Home of the Siwash. — A race of canoemen — Water routes — 
Canoe patterns — War canoes — Canoe manufacture — Camping 
out — Chinook jargon — A bloody house-warming — Slavery — 
Concubinage — Creoles — Some queer customs — Old-time relics — ■ 
Hard-working natives — Heavy packs— Gallantry to women — - 
Some bad traits — Typical native houses — Dirt and abundance — 
Totem poles and pedigrees — Indians who are well fixed — Gro- 
tesque handiwork — Native dyes — Hoochinoo — Gambling, - 79 

CHAPTER VII. 

Good Indians. — Redskins with beards — Ethnology of Pacific coast 
tribes — Waifs from Asia and Mexico — British Indian policy 
commended — Solution of the Indian problem — The Russian 
policy and methods — Savage appeal for teachers — A "wan- 
wan," or peace conference — Chilkats and Chilkoots — A "pot- 
latch " and a truce — War dance — Versatility in handicraft — 
Missionary efforts — Antagonisms — Female lapses, - - - 91 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Medicine and Mythology. — Shaman burial houses — Medicine 
men — Frightening disease — A terrible doctor — Medicine rat- 
tles — Methods of burial — Cremation — Transmigration of souls — 
A ghost with teeth — Funeral ceremonies — A funeral pile — 
Mourning customs — Vandalism of curio hunters — Hieroglyphs 
and mythology — Heraldic emblems — The thunder-bird — Legend 
of Mt. Edgecumb — Some Alaskan snakes — Native humor — 
Religious zeal, ---------- 108 



CONTENTS. 
CHAPTER IX. 

Alaska's Mineral Wealth. — The "stuff" there — Testimony of 
naval officers — Developments retarded from lack of capital — 
The largest stamp-mill in the world — Douglas Island — Insular 
and mainland deposits — Placer mining — Silver Bow basin — An 
" araster." — A lively mining town — Native miners — Gold on 
the Yukon — Sitka mines — " Lake Mountain Mining Com- 
pany " — History of mining in Alaska — Nick Haley — The 
Stickeen gold diggings — Coal and other minerals — Marble 
quarries — Well-behaved miners, .-..-. 



CHAPTER X. 

Commercial Fisheries. — How fishing-grounds are located— Pro- 
lific waters — Alaskan enterprise — TheChilkat salmon cannery — 
A picturesque location — Seining and curing salmon — Indian 
employes — Store-houses perched in trees — A "dog-salmon" — 
Halibut — Decrease of the Atlantic halibut catch — Indian 
methods of catching halibut — Deep-sea fishing — Dog-fish oil — 
Future possibilities — Varieties of Pacific coast fishes — Viviparous 
fishes — Rock fish — The black cod and its capture — Herring 
fisheries — Ranges of commercial fishes — The oolachan or candle 
fish — Sturgeon and their capture — Other economical fishes and 
marine products — Atlantic fishermen on the Pacific, - - 130 



CHAPTER XL 

Rambles along Shore. — Down by the sea — Anadramous and fresh 
water fishes — The sea trout — Fishing for sport — Spawning 
seasons — What the ebb tide reveals — Gigantic mollusks — 
Absence of oysters — Immense kelps — The incoming tide — 
Marine phosphorescence — Creeping and crawling monstrosi- 
ties — Animate flowers and fruits — Devil fish— Black bass- 
Shore birds — Sea fowl — Breeding places — Routes of migration — 
Pass shooting — Fishing bears — Voracity of flies — Deer shoot- 
ing — Mountain climbing — Rock ptarmigan — Among the peaks — 
Mountain goats — Mt. St. Elias silver bear — Bighorn sheep — 
Stalking, " 153 



CHAPTER XII. 

The Glacier Fields. — Home of the iceberg — Glacial dynamics — 
Glacier fields of Greenland — Spirits of the ice — Esquimo super- 
stition — Tiie Muir glacier — An iceberg factory — Progressive 
movement of glaciers — Glacier Bay — Fairy scenes — Lassoing an 
iceberg — Supernatural colors — An Arctic landscape — Realm of 
desolation — Astounding phenomena — Artillery in the air — An 
apathetic spectator^ — The mer de glace — A ganglion of glaciers — 
Moraines— Glacial recession — Outfit for glacial exploration — 
Icebergs by moonlight, ----___. 168 



Vlll. CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Russia in America. — Sleepy Sitka — Steamer day — A one-horse 
town — Sight-seeing — An informal ball — Dust of the Roman- 
offs — An early sunrise — Local amusements — A charming site — 
A waif from Asia — Sitka's environs- — Hot springs and volca- 
noes — Russian mementoes — High life in the bush — The Greek 
Church in America — An ecclesiastical wreck — Indian communi- 
cants — A useful institution — General dilapidation — Ghost of the 
castle — Russian dwellings — A drive and a park — Seat of govern- 
ment — Straight business — An Alaska newspaper — Mileage for 
culprits — Territorial affairs — Beyond Sitka — Wonderful Scenery 
— Mt. St. Elias, 178 

CHAPTER XIV. 

SEALS of the Prjbylovs. — Prof. Elliott's official report — Location 
of the islands — How they look — Why seals frequent them — 
Volcanic craters — Millions of sea-fowl — Civilization in Salt — 
Horticulture under difficulties — Stump-tail cats — Odoriferous 
isles — Home of the walrus and sea lion — A Polar bear asylum — 
Aleutian colonists — Cities in the sea — Schools and millinery 
openings — A full church calendar — Pious communities — No 
policemen — Large Alaska towns beyond Sitka — The Alaska 
Commercial Company — Seal rookeries — Driving, killing, skin- 
ning, and dyeing — High price of fur — Sealing in lower lati- 
tudes — Light and shade — Introspect and retrospect. - - - 192 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Frontispiece — Stickeen River, .... — 

U. S. Tripods in Channel, .... 29 

Klootchmans, 35 

Stone Totem-Pole (Hydah), .... 65 

Totem-Poles, 73 

Seal Skin Bidarka, 78 

Indian Chiefs (Hyas Tyee), .... 87 

Indian Houses at Wrangell, .... 90 

Metlah-kahtla, ....... 105 

Chiefs' House and Totem-Poles — Wrangell, 113 

Indian Grave, .119 

Indian Village — Sitka, 125 

Black Cod, 139 

Hunting Mountain Goats, . . . 163 

Muir Glacier, , 170 

An Excursion Party, . 199 



ITINERARY. 



Twice a month a fairly good ocean steamer, with com- 
fortable appointments for excursionists leaves Portland, Ore- 
gon, for Alaska, carrying the mails, freight and passengers, 
and returning makes the round trip in about thirty days. It 
connects at Port Townsend, the United States port of entry 
for Puget Sound waters, with the regular steamer from San 
Francisco. The excursion season extends from June to 
September inclusive, but trips are made the whole year 
round. The best route to Portland for passengers from 
California and the South is by rail and stage. The 900 
miles between San Francisco and Portland, is full of delight- 
ful experiences all the way. It used to make the heart ache 
to contemplate the journey, and the bones ache to accom- 
plish it ; but now almost seven-eighths of the distance are 
done by steam, and for the rest, it is but a charming epi- 
sode on wheels, taking the tourist through the most delight- 
ful scenery of the west coast, that he may be the better pre- 
pared to compare it with what is superlative beyond. All 
the scenic attractions of the coast range, of the San Joa- 
quin and Sacramento valleys, the Sierra Nevadas just within 
view, Mt. Shasta in its isolated grandeur, the Siskiyou 
Mountains, just across the Oregon line, and the Rogue River 
and Willamette Valleys, are vouchsafed to us within the 
limit of three days. How we bridge the mighty intervals 
of space, and handicap old time in this modern race of 
life !" 

For elegant comfort, without sight-seeing, the magnificent 
Steamers of the Pacific Mail Company, running from San 
Francisco to Portland, and Port Townsend on Puget Sound, 
afford an incomparable service. The boats of the trans- 
Atlantic routes to Europe are hardly more luxurious ; and 
those dwellers of the Pacific to whom the beauties of the in- 
land journey are familiar, generally choose the water route. 
Excursion tickets which are good for 40 days from date of 
issue, enable the tourist to accomplish both the inside and 
the outside routes. Eastern people choose the Union 
Pacific or Northern Pacific railroads, and Canadians the 



IO OUR NEW ALASKA. 

Canadian Pacific, according as geographical location meets 
their convenience. Those of the Southwest find their 
objective point most accessible by the Southern Pacific. 
Happy is he whose course leads across the northern tiers, 
where the phenomenal solar heat of midsummer is always 
tempered by a vitalizing atmosphere which cools when the 
sun goes down. It would do your honest hearts good to 
see the complaisance with which our Canadian neighbors 
regard their completed transit — a stupendous accomplish- 
ment whose engineering difficulties take precedence in com- 
parison with the mightiest of our own, and whose passage 
through the rugged gaps of three successive mountain 
ranges makes our single cut across the Rockies, seem almost 
common-place. Yet the Northern Pacific is a more inter- 
esting route, and the most desirable for all whose conven- 
ience permits a choice. It traverses a more diversified and 
populous country, and is besides the great continental 
artery whose pulsations are destined to keep the life-blood 
warm in all our Alaskan extremities. It will presently become 
the great feeder and factor of our Alaskan commerce, and 
the popular thoroughfare of two-thirds of those who, by and 
by, will regard the tour as imperative, as they have done the 
stereotyped tour of Europe, now becoming a familiar and 
effete experience. 

I recall with pleasure my journey over this great thorough- 
fare, and the vague anticipations of my first Alaska trip. 
My thoughts were full of the unknown land. The outlook 
seemed without a horizon. I felt more than ever " foot- 
loose," — like a candidate blind-folded for a first degree, or 
a novice after the preliminary toss of a blanket — not guess- 
ing what was coming next, but feeling that all would turn 
out right in the end. I fared sumptuously in the dining 
car ; and my time was agreeably divided between reverie 
and repletion. 

" Going to Alaska ! Going to Alaska ! " 

For three consecutive nights I had lain in my Pullman 
berth, traveling westward, and between the hours of som- 
nolence and semi-wakefulness, I would listen to the cadence 
of the car wheels as the train rumbled on, and each mono- 
tonous iteration, seemed always to repeat, with a repetition 
which made me tired : " Going to Alaska — going to Alaska 
— going to Alaska — going to Alaska — going to Alaska ! " 
Sometimes it would drop into a subdued refrain, and anon 
increase to a rattling emphasis when the train ran through a 
cut, and this continuous admonition was broken only when- 
ever we came to a full stop and all the waste air in the 



ITINERARY. II 

brakes blew off with a prolonged sigh and a fizz. Of course 
I had started from St. Paul with that intention (to go to 
Alaska) and it was perhaps well to know that I had made 
no mistake in the passage ; nevertheless, it was a rest to all 
the senses when daylight came to relieve the night-watch, 
and unfold the wondrous revelations of the trans-continen- 
tal trip. How impotent have been the attempts of pen 
and brush to impress the comprehension with the reality of 
things seen. In vain I hold up my hands and cry " 'mira- 
bile." No two days ' experiences were alike. Each suc- 
ceeding view and extended panorama was altogether dif- 
ferent from its predecessor, and one had hardly time to be 
amazed at this, before he was lost in new admiration of the 
other. " There is one glory of the sun, another of the 
moon, and another glory of the stars." Across the illimita- 
ble grain fields and the prairie, through the mysterious 
" Bad lands," over the pine-clad and snow-capped moun- 
tains, past the far-reaching sage plains, and down the tran- 
scendent Columbia to the portals of the broad Pacific — 
every division of the grand thoroughfare we traversed was 
crammed full of novelty and absorbing interest. The 
delicious warmth of an August atmosphere lay over all, and 
delightful anticipations continually gave place to blissful 
realization. 

The tourist no sooner strikes the Columbia River than he 
seems to have gotten into a new kingdom of creation. The 
sudden transition from an interminable sage plain of more 
than one hundred miles in breadth to vertical cliffs and pal- 
isades which rise to fifteen hundred feet sheer out of the 
river — this unexpected step from the unlimited horizontal to 
the unattainable perpendicular — is of itself phenomenal. 
Then the architecture of the rocks and hills is different from 
any thing east. The rivers flow in mighty volume, green as 
emerald, and plunge into black rifts and chasms, churning 
their sides with foam. Shifting sands in their exposed beds 
blow into fantastic dunes and bury the underbrush along 
the shores until only their leafy tops protrude. Waterfalls 
leap from dizzy heights, emulating the Yosemite. The 
vegetation is luxui'iant, and all the field of flora is new. 
Every thing is gigantic. The common alder bush grows to 
merchantable wood, and the principal forest trees into giant 
columns six feet thick. The orchards break down with 
redundant fruitage, and whenever there is a neglected gar- 
den patch the sweet briars and wild vines overrun the in- 
closing fences and bury them out of sight. Mosses cling to 
the limbs of trees in solid masses and festoons, and cover 



12 OUR NE W ALA SKA. 

prostrate trunks ten Liches deep. All along the route from 
the Dalles to Portland are gangs of Chinese, section-hands, 
at work along the railroad with costumes quaint and scanty, 
and features bland and child-like. It was against those ver- 
tical walls which overhang the Columbia, that they swung 
the indomitable heathen from the heights aloft, to drill and 
blast a passage for the railroad out of the solid rock. I 
know not how many dozens lost their lives in the dangerous 
exploit, but inasmuch as they stood substitute and proxy for 
supposed better men, this little trifle can hardly enter into 
the " Chinese Question." 

Of course all tourists rhapsodize the notable points of 
view along the river — the Dalles, Cape Horn, the Cascades, 
Pillars of Hercules, Rooster Rock and Multnomah Falls, 
each of which, if isolated and apart, instead of contiguous 
to each other, would constitute an attraction which tourists 
would travel far to visit. Not the least interesting novel- 
ties are the fish-wheels along the shores, both portable and 
stationary, which scoop up the running salmon from March 
to August by the tens of thousands, looking for all the 
world like the obsolete mill-wheels of New England. 
Occasionally little groups of Oregon Indians come in view, 
seeming one-third civilized and two-thirds blank. In vain, 
however, we look for the spectral outlines of Mount Hope 
and other notable peaks, for all the atmosphere is thick 
with smoke of forest fires which have spread all over the 
country ; and for six weeks past no one has drawn a breath 
of pure air, so that the inhabitants of this notoriously moist 
and fog-ridden region pray for rain. In course of time we 
come to a comfortable halt at the romantic little station of 
Bonneville, where a breakfast is served with more than 
Oriental profusion of melons, fruits and vegetables in every 
grown variety, and with milk and eggs, poultry, fish and 
meats, and every thing else toothsome and edible, piled on 
platters three tiers deep until the table holds no more — 
and still the waiters come with reinforcements, hands full, 
and loaded to the " gunnel." It seemed to the parched 
and dusty travelers from the arid sage plain, just now left 
behind, as if they had suddenly struck an oasis and every 
thing had been knocked into " pi " by the collision. The 
markets of Oregon and California were emptied out upon 
the board ; Ceres and Pomona sat helpless with their laps 
full. With this wide-open welcome the brief additional 
run to Portland was made without apprehension, although 
the approaching city could not be distinguished through 
the murk. 



ITINERAR Y. 13 

There is a reputable tradition that when the atmosphere 
is clear, a view can be had from points of vantage whese 
unfolding is like a revelation of the celestial realm. Afar 
off in the horizon, just where the intense blue firmament 
seems to flank the spirit land, a trio of snowy peaks loom 
up from the somber plain in clear cut whiteness against the 
sky, like pyramids of crystal, Mt. Hood conspicuous and 
majestic above the rest. Rising in their purity to the very 
dome of heaven, and gleaming with a translucence super- 
natural, positive yet most intangible, they stand, as it were, 
the embodiment of the Eternal Trinity — not mere reflections 
of this material world. It is seldom that this beatific 
vision comes, even to patient watchers ; for fogs and mists 
obscure them in the spring, and clouds of smoke hangover 
them all the summer long ; but if, perchance, September 
rains should purify the air and lift the lowering veil, they 
appear momentarily to the world as the reflex of the divine 
transfiguration. As such, I beheld as one privileged. The 
time-favored denizens of Portland could not appreciate it 
more. 

I don't know why tourists prefer to take the Alaska 
steamer to Portland via the Columbia River, and its dis- 
tressful bar, with the supplementary and outside passage to 
Victoria, instead of choosing the Puget Sound route, 
except that they can thereby secure their berths for the 
voyage and survey serenely the subsequent scramble for 
places when the overland passengers arrive on board. The 
consideration is certainly important, but the experienced 
voyager can secure equal comforts by correspondence with 
the officials of the steamship company. One who took the 
river route writes : 

" The Lower Columbia has none of the grand and sub- 
lime scenery of the Upper Columbia, where it breaks its way 
through the Cascade Mountains, but it has a picturesque 
beauty all its own, wooded isles and bold headlands, the 
river banks being high, wooded bluffs, with mountains in 
the background. We had an occasional picture of lovely 
level farms lying along the river and stretching back for 
miles, but such glimpses of cultivation were rare. Settle- 
ments were few. At about four in the afternoon we 
reached Astoria, which is fifteen miles from the sea ; and 
to-day we climbed to the top of a high hill, from which we 
could see the breakers on the bar. Astoria is quite a pretty 
town, has a population of five or six thousand, and its chief 
industries, fish and lumber, remain the same in kind as 
when John Jacob Astor established his trading post here. 



14 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

The best part of the town, in regard to residence, is back 
on the hills, which rise steep and near to the shore, while 
the business part is built on piles over tide water." 

An eight hours' ride by rail is a moderate journey, and 
while the steamer is buffeting the waves of the outside pas- 
sage, the overland tourist from Portland to Tacoma is per- 
mitted to enjoy the comforts of the superb hostelry at the 
head of the sound, and perchance to view the snow-crested 
peak of Mt. Tacoma, standing out in its virgin purity, like 
a spirit of retrospection against the deep blue background 
of sky. On it there are glaciers equal in size to those 
found among the Alps. He may also observe the humble 
houses under the hill by the cove, where the presence of a 
half dozen Chinese small merchants was permitted for 
years to vex the equanimity of 7,000 people, but now hav- 
ing been charitably wiped out, is obnoxious no more. 
From Tacoma to Victoria there is a six hours' sail across a 
long reach of the sound by the splendid steamer " Olym- 
pian," palatial as any in the east, and electric-lighted in 
every apartment. On the route is Seattle, a goodly brick- 
built city of some ten thousand souls, already made histori- 
cal by its four days' war with a "barbarian horde" of 
Chinese 140 strong ; then Port Townsend, the lands' end 
of our western possessions before Alaska, perched high 
upon a perpendicular bluff whose top is reached by a hun- 
dred steps, with the mercantile traffic properly bestowed 
upon the flat below. At every intermediate hamlet and 
landing there is a saw-mill, with the primitive forest for a 
background and reminder of its purpose. On every side 
there are intimations of the country's recent settlement and 
the presence of the wilderness. Indian dug-out canoes of 
fantastic shapes with carved prows, steal quietly along the 
shadowy shores, or cross the open water between the 
embowered islands. Up and down, with every sweep of the 
eye, this notable Mediterranean stretches its majestic length 
of two hundred miles ; at times a broad expanse, anon no 
wider than a river, with many a point and promontory 
and curve of shore, roadsteads tortuous, channels narrow, 
and water bluer than the reflected skies, dotted with 
islands, indented with umbrageous recesses .where the 
unsuspicious fish breaks the quiet surface, and offering in 
every littoral dell and sweep of forest such delights as 
sportsmen covet and endure long journeys to enjoy. And 
yet, on every side are budding hamlets and thrifty settle- 
ments with airs of comfort, farms and hop-fields, and busy 
saw-mills, and great ships sailing filled with surplus wheat, 



ITINERARY. 1 5 

and steamboats plying hither and yon — all significant of 
energetic industry and a prosperous future. It is said that 
a hundred steamboats ply the waters of the sound. 

But the speculative tourist, looking far beyond, Alaska- 
ward, is not content to abide. Victoria, the entrepot of 
British Columbia, claims direct attention, and there is not a 
surer refuge or resting place for the sea-worn and wayfar- 
ing than the land-locked basin which forms its harbor. 
While the good ship which is to take us onward waits at 
her dock, and the purser and steward are making out their 
lists, we have two days on shore to see the town. There is 
a commodious hotel, called the " Driard," where the most 
exacting guest can be made comfortable. It is quite up to 
the modern standard, built of stone, and occupies half a 
square ; containing within its walls a creditable Opera 
House, which alone cost $50,000 to construct. Its landlord 
is a dapper Louisiana Frenchman, acquainted with every 
body in the two countries, and therefore a companionable 
host for strangers to meet, having no race prejudices and 
providing plenty to eat. 

This far-western city is as substantial as it is charming. 
Started originally as a fur company's post, and afterward 
boomed into importance by the Fraser River mining excite- 
ment of 1858, time has proved that other than even extran- 
eous causes have contributed to its prosperity and growth. 
All the steamer lines of the Province center at Victoria, 
whence they reach all coast ports where settlements have 
been made, and penetrate far into the interior by ascending 
the Fraser River and other water-ways ; and trade increases 
constantly in proportion as the tributary settlements and 
industries expand. The flags were all at half mast the day 
I arrived, in commemoration of the Grant obsequies, and 
my heart warmed toward the good people for their respect 
shown to our great captain. Travelers say the town is 
intensely English in its composition. If so, it has a warm 
corner for its neighbors, and the " English of it " is good 
will. A considerable portion of the town-site has been set 
aside and designated as " Beacon Hill Park," with winding 
drives, gentle undulations, conspicuous eminences, majes- 
tic trees, and a wonderful outlook toward the seas where 
some small earthworks and great guns frown imperiously ; 
but to me the entire location seemed like a natural park, 
with its numerous bridges and points of rock, its pictur- 
esque bays and inlets, its islands and bits of beach, its 
clusters of trees and luxuriant gardens, every eminence 
crowned with a modern villa, every cove cuddling a cosy 



16 OUR NE W ALA SKA. 

cottage, and all the well-built business blocks occupying a 
curve of the land-locked harbor, constituting a picture of 
solid comfort and natural beauty which grew more and 
more attractive as it became familiar. There was just 
enough shipping to give the place an air of importance — ■ 
some square-rigged vessels, some steamers, and a few old 
hulks which were well nigh past service. Here lay the old 
Hudson Bay steamer " Beaver," which crossed the ocean 
in 1832. It is said she has cheese aboard now which she 
brought then. Here was the " Otter," which laid the sub- 
marine cable, and the " Wilson G. Hunt," once plying in 
New York waters. Up the gorge, where the tide flows 
furiously, except at slack and flood, is a famous place for 
catching sea-trout with rod and fly. Everywhere about the 
bay Indian canoes were plying, and there were groups of 
tents on shore, with hectic salmon spread on neighboring 
rocks to dry. The dusky groups carelessly disposed about 
the grass, men, women, and children, in motley dress, sit- 
ting on native mats, and skins of mountain goats, knitting, 
mending clothes, plaiting baskets, lounging, or lazily turn- 
ing the half-cured fish, resemble a gypsy camp or holiday 
picnic, so civilized are their appearance and surroundings. 
Few visible traces of aboriginal barbarism remain, only some 
rude lip ornament, or cherished habit almost obsolete, or 
amulet, or knick-knack, transmitted from their remote 
progenitors. Red, black and yellow colors predominate in 
their rustic fancy, — yellow scarfs for the head or neck, red 
for shawls or jackets, and black for frocks and skirts of 
women. In the city streets we see the girls in pairs loll up 
to the shop windows with the easy abandon of habitues, 
laughing outright with delight at the glittering objects dis- 
played, as much enraptured and absorbed as a cat in catnip. 
Three generations of intercourse with white people whose 
policy has been justice and humanity and tempered with 
firmness, have won their confidence. They were treated 
kindly from the start, and no white man was permitted to do 
them an injustice without being punished for his conduct. 
At the same time they were made to understand that they 
were equally amenable to wrong doing. They were also 
given employment in pursuits suited to their proclivities 
and aptitude, which brought them food, trinkets, and cloth- 
ing they had before been destitute of, whereby they learned 
the value of friendly relations with the new-comers. Hence- 
forth we shall find them an omnipresent quantity along the 
coast, varying somewhat in features, habits, disposition and 
intelligence, but all well-disposed and tractable. Here in 



ITINERARY. 1 7 

Victoria the tourist can pick up much information of 
Alaska, together with curios, photographs of scenery, maps 
of route and itineraries, not to omit a " Chinook " dictionary 
which will be useful to him at all times, and indispensable 
if he wishes to make the most of his opportunities to trade 
with the natives and learn the ways of the people ; all of 
which he can buy cheaper for cash than up the coast. 

The most interesting and aesthetic part of Victoria is 
the Chinese quarter, which is a cleanly business suburb of 
solid red brick blocks, with buildings two and three stories 
high ornamented with green verandas. Some of the stories 
and shops are very spacious, with superb fittings of gilt, 
tapestry and carved work, comprising stocks of general 
merchandise, drugs, spices and specialties. One of these 
Chinamen is said to own real estate within the limits worth 
$200,000. I took occasion to go through all parts of their 
reserve, into their theaters, joss houses and houses of pleasure, 
into their opium joints and their squalid and poverty-worn 
tenements where a dozen persons are herded together in a sin- 
gle room, and was compelled to change the impression which I 
had formed from popular hear-say. The worst I saw was not 
half as foul and repulsive as the slums of some populous 
eastern cities, outside of New York. They have a comforta- 
ble building where they board and lodge their kinsfolk when 
they first arrive, or when sick, or out of work, or on a visit 
from the interior. It is a sort of hotel-hospital. There 
are no Chinese beggars, for " John " takes care of his own 
in purse and person, and will even return their dead bodies 
to China, if desired. The impression that the return of 
dead Chinamen is imperative, is a myth, and absurd on the 
face of it ; but the prejudiced will believe any thing. I 
found them engaged in every kind of occupation, except 
the very highest, and was amazed at their general thrift, 
sobriety, and intelligence. The policy of the Canadians to- 
ward these Mongolians is much more liberal than ours, — as 
it has been with the Indians, — and in course of time they will 
surely profit by it. In British Columbia the occidental 
section of the Flowery Kingdom blooms and blossoms as 
the rose — a tea rose, as it were, whose fine points, not all 
of thorns, might be studied with advantage if we would 
only take the cue. But it is whispered in the inner chamber 
that the days of the cue are numbered. The conditions 
of a mighty dispensation are about to be fulfilled. The 
time is near at hand when the Chinese will be at liberty to 
cut off their cues and dispense with their large sleeves. 

They say that according to a prophecy in one of their 



15 OUR NEW ALA SKA. 

sacred books, the reigning dynasty that imposed, centuries 
ago, the custom of dress now in vogue, will come to an end, 
and the new government will make the abolishment of both 
permissible — an act devoutly hailed by Chinamen. Thence- 
forth, these insignia of race distinctions will not be any more 
imperatively imposed. Obstacles to naturalization and 
American citizenship will be removed. Indeed, the days of 
immunity are already being anticipated, and scores of 
Chinese here and in the United States are taking out papers. 
Leading celestials assert that the movement will soon be- 
come general, and that most of their people in the south- 
west will soon proceed to become American citizens and 
permanent residents ; that they will then bring over their 
wives and children and spend their earnings here ; and that 
all the money which has hitherto been sent abroad for their 
support will be " blowed .into " the treasury of the United 
States. Truly, the patience and long-suffering of the 
" heathen," in consequence of their two-fold religious and 
political disabilities, are worthy of admiration. For a free 
country such inflictions are hard to bear. 

It was at Victoria that I first noticed that exuberance of 
vegetation which surprised me still more when I reached 
Alaska. The maple leaves were larger than I could span ; 
alders grew into trees ; fruit-trees broke under the weight 
of fruitage ; honeysuckles grew rank, and moss clung to the 
trees in great masses ; ferns were several feet in length ; 
water melons as big as a barrel ; growing pines ran up into 
the air indefinitely. Everything on this coast is gigantic, 
from the rocks and mountains and " big trees " to the 
Chinese immigration, the forest fires, and the ambition of 
the politicians. No wonder that the people of the Pacific 
coast claim to be the most favored^ in the world ; they ab- 
sorb the beneficence of the Creator. 

Three miles from Victoria, at Esquimault, there is a naval 
station, with arsenal, hospital, dock-yard, and powder mag- 
azine, the latter located on an island. The dry-dock is sub- 
stantially built of concrete faced with sandstone, and will 
cost when fully completed a half million of dollars. The 
harbor is one of the deepest and securest in the world. 



ITINERARY.— Continued. 



It is no small task to equip and provision a steamer, car- 
rying two hundred persons, and get her under way for a 
month ; but finally all the pigs, and poultry, and cabbages, 
and crates of fruit, and ice, and carcasses of beef, are trun- 
dled aboard and stowed conveniently for the steward's daily 
deal ; the sheep and hay are snugly housed between decks, 
and the last reluctant steer is forced up the gangway by a 
twist of the tail so excruciating that it wrings out a sugges- 
tion of ox-tail soup for next day's bill of fare. Then the 
hawsers are cast off, and the good ship swings bravely into 
the stream on the hope of her new departure — bound for 
Alaska. 

First, there is an eight hour's run of 70 miles to the Brit- 
ish port of Nanaimo for coal, in the course of which, if the 
atmosphere be clear, the snow-clad peaks of the Cascade 
range of mountains will appear like a crystal rampart across 
the sea. There is a succession of them, rising one above 
the other, and looking as unreal and ethereal as a vision of 
fairy-land. Enchantment of the voyage begins at the very 
threshold of departure, and the first outlook is exhilarating 
with satisfying promise. Nanaimo is the headquarters of 
the Vancouver Coal Company, and the distributing depot 
of a large coal district. The coal areas of this province are 
widely spread, of whose product San Francisco alone takes 
150,000 tons per annum. Departure Bay and Nanaimo are 
twin harbors connected by a deep narrow channel of ample 
width for navigation. The town lies along the bay, with 
streets quite irregular in conformity with the sinuosities of 
the indented shore line. A dense and continuous pine for- 
est, underlaid by coal measures, occupies the back ground. 
There is an octagonal block house three stories high, which 
years ago did duty for the Hudson Bay Fur Company. 
Hence, through the picturesque Strait of Georgia to the 
head of Vancouver, 300 miles or more, there are islands all 
the way, with a good deal of scrub cedar and fir ; now and 
then a farm house and clearing. Every body on board the 
steamer busily studies charts, picking out the course of the 



20 OUR NE W ALASKA. 

ship in advance, and locating her hourly whereabouts. Hour 
after hour there succeeds an alternation of deep narrow 
channels hemmed in by mountains, and long reaches of 
open water which glisten with the scintillations of the sun. 
Deep bays reach far into the land, and projecting points 
invite the lambent breezes of the sea. Here and there are 
shoals with warning beacons, and tide-rips churned by 
counter-currents into foam, into which if a vessel without 
steam be caught, she drifts on dangers, powerless to escape. 
Of such mischances we see some victims now and then high 
and dry on sunken reefs, keeled over. Sometimes, when 
running close to land the jutting ledges seem about to pour 
their leaping waterfalls bodily upon the deck, and over- 
reaching boughs almost brush the taffrail as we pass. All 
the shores are lined with drift-wood and stranded trunks of 
enormous trees, weather-worn and naked. The average 
rise of tide is eighteen feet, and on the ebb and flow, its 
velocity through the narrow channels reaches nine miles an 
hour, so that vessels have to make intelligent forecast of 
time of tide, of fogs, and hours of moonlight. To attempt 
the passage except on flood and slack is to court destruc- 
tion, for although the mean depth of water is sometimes 
seventy fathoms, the tortuous straits are filled with hidden 
rocks. The first and worst of these is " Seymour Rapids," 
a passage less than a quarter of a mile wide, about nine 
hours run from Nanaimo ; and here in the awful swell and 
vortex which lashes each broken shore with the rage of 
Niagara's whirlpools, the U. S. man of War " Saranac " went 
down, shivered on a sunken rock ; and in the self-same 
place, by an extraordinary coincidence of mischances, the 
steamer " Grappler " was burned and sunk. She was carry- 
ing Chinese coolies, of whom seventy vainly struggled 
momentarily with the surging waves, and disappeared ; but 
they do say that their bodies periodically come to the sur- 
face, and pitch about the eddies, with pigtails streaming 
wildly in their wake, though the more matter-of-fact opinion 
is that the objects seen are only strings of kelp drifting on 
the tide. Other dangerous passages are Grenville Strait 
and Peril Strait. For the rest, the journey is at present 
without risk or peradventure, and with ordinary seaman- 
ship and prudence, depending much upon experienced 
pilots, may be made with less discomfort than the pas- 
sage of Long Island Sound; for the sweep of the ocean 
blasts seldom reaches these sheltered by-ways. Fogs are 
chronic, however, for eight months of the year, and apt to 
occur at early morning, all the summer long, though they 



ITINERARY. 2 1 

do not interrupt travel ; for navigators have learned to 
evoke the echoes from the enfilading walls and headlands 
by resonant blasts of the steam whistle, and so estimate 
their courses, whereabouts, and distances. 

By the time passengers have been two or three days at 
sea, they get to know many of the tricks of the ship, as well 
as of their fellow-voyagers. They have topics in common 
which promote familiar intercourse ; and so, between the 
scenery, the log, the bill of fare, and themselves, they find 
strong ties of mutual sympathy. Furthermore, the sailors 
had a bear aboard, named " Pete," which was raised on 
bilge water and was very tame; a black setter, a companion 
of the bear ; a toy terrier ; and a fine tom-cat; all of whose 
intellects had been largely developed by their association 
with tourists and shipmates. I know of no better training- 
school for bears than a voyage of this kind. 

From the head of Vancouver Island to the Alaskan 
frontier, the coast maintains the same indented and tortuous 
line, flanked by innumerable islands. The mountains 
gradually increase in height, and at Grenville Narrows they 
rise to fully 3,000 feet, directly out of the sea ; some of 
them with snowy peaks, and numerous water-falls tumbling 
from their aerial reservoirs, but wooded at the base with 
conifers. As the civilization of this region is mainly apart 
from the route of the steamer, and unseen by tourists who 
imagine it all unsettled, I venture to prompt the reader 
from the pages of the West Shore Magazine, so that erron- 
eous impressions may not obtain. Some may be astonished 
at the proficiency of the Indians, not long since savage. 

We read : " The population of this region is chiefly In- 
dian, and they are both intelligent and industrious ; per- 
forming nearly all the labor of the two industries — salmon 
canning and lumbering — which have gained a foothold 
there. In going north, Rivers Inlet is the first reached 
where industries have been established. At its head is sit- 
uated the village of Weekeeno. On the inlet are two sal- 
mon canneries and a saw-mill. Bella Coola is situated at 
the head of Burke Channel, on the North Bentinck Arm. 
It is the site of a Hudson's Bay company post, and years 
ago was the landing place for the Cariboo mines. Bella 
Coola River is a considerable stream entering the arm from 
across the mountains. Here is a tract of some 2,600 acres 
of rich delta land, which is partially cultivated by the In- 
dians. Bella Bella is a Hudson's Bay post on Campbell 
Island, near the head of Milbank Sound, 400 miles north of 
Victoria. There are three Indian villages, with a combined 



22 OUR NEW ALA SKA. 

population of 500. The next important point is the mouth 
of Skeena River, a large stream flowing from the interior. 
It is a prolific salmon stream, and there are three canneries 
on its banks ; one at Aberdeen, another at Inverness Slough, 
and a third at Port Essington, near its mouth, where there 
is a small village of traders, fishermen and Indians. The 
river is navigable for light draught steamers as far as 
Mumford Landing, sixty miles inland, and 200 miles further 
for canoes. There are two missionary stations on the river, 
and along its course are many spots favorable for settle- 
ments. 

" Sixteen miles beyond the mouth of the Skeena is the 
town of Metlakahtla, on the Tsimpsheean Peninsula. There 
are a store, salmon cannery, a large church and school- 
house. This is an Indian missionary station, about which are 
gathered fully 1,000 Tsimpsheean Indians, who have been 
taught many of the mechanical arts. They have a saw- 
mill, barrel factory, blacksmith shop ; live in good wooden 
houses; do the work at the cannery, and are industrious in 
many other ways ; the women having learned the art of 
weaving woolen fabrics. Fifteen miles beyond Metlakahtla, 
on the northwest end of the same peninsula, is the impor- 
tant station of Fort Simpson, separated from Alaska Terri- 
tory by the channel of Portland Inlet. This is one of the 
finest harbors in British Columbia, and was for years the 
most important post of the Hudson's Bay Company in the 
upper country, furs being brought there from the vast inte- 
rior. Besides the company's post, the Methodist Mission 
has buildings valued at $9,000. There are about 800 
Indians in the village, most of them living in good shingled 
houses and wearing civilized costumes. They are governed 
by a council, and have various organizations, including a 
temperance society, rifle company, fire company and a brass 
band. They earn much money in the fisheries. Forty 
miles up the Portland Channel is the mouth of Nass 
River, a very important stream in the fishing industry, 
being the greatest known resort of the oolachan. Two sal- 
mon canneries, a saw-mill, store, two missionary stations 
and several Indian villages are situated along the stream. 
The climate is favorable to the growth of fruit, cereals and 
root crops near the coast, and there are a number of quite 
extensive tracts of bottom lands, requiring only to be 
cleared to render them fit for agriculture or grazing. 
Further up the stream there are a number of good locations, 
and several settlements have been made. Gold is found in 
small quantities along the river. 



ITINERARY. 23 

" A special feature of the province is the outlying group 
of large islands known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, the 
upper end lying nearly opposite the southern extremity of 
Alaska. They are three in number — Graham, Moresby and 
Provost — and are about 170 miles long and 100 wide. They 
are mountainous and heavily timbered, and the climate is 
more genial and the rainfall less than on the mainland coast, 
Along the northern end of Graham, the most northerly of 
the group, is a tract of low lands thirty-five miles in extent, 
and much level, arable land is to be found elsewhere, which 
only requires clearing. There are also many extensive 
marshy fiats requiring drainage to render them fit for culti- 
vation. The mineral resources of the islands are undoubt- 
edly great. The only industry now established is the fac- 
tory of the Skidegate Oil Company, on Skidegate Island in 
a good harbor at the southern end of Graham Island. In 
connection with this is a store. The Hudson Bay Company 
has a store and a trading post at Massett, near the upper 
end of Graham's Island, where there are a Protestant Mis- 
sion and a large Indian village. 

" There are several villages on each of the islands of the 
group which are occupied by Hydah Indians, the most in- 
telligent of the aboriginal inhabitants of the coast. Their 
origin, in the absence of any written record or historical 
inscriptions, is an interesting subject for speculation. Their 
features, tattooing, carvings and legends indicate that they 
are castaways from Eastern Asia, who, first reaching the 
islands of Southern Alaska, soon took and held exclusive 
possession of the Queen Charlotte group. Their physical 
and intellectual superiority over the North Coast Indians, 
and also marked contrasts in the structure of their language, 
denote a different origin. They are of good size, with ex- 
ceptionably well developed chests and arms, high foreheads 
and lighter complexion than any other North American 
Indians. 

" Massett, the principal and probably oldest village of the 
Hydah Nation, is pleasantly situated on the north shore of 
Graham Island at the entrance to Massett Inlet. Fifty 
houses, great and small, built of cedar logs and planks, with 
a forest of carved poles in front, extend along the fine 
beach. The house of Chief Weeah, is fifty-five feet square, 
containing timbers of immense size, and planks three feet 
and one-half in width and eighteen inches thick. The vil- 
lage now has a population of about 250, the remnants of a 
once numerous people, the houses in ruins here having 
accommodated several times that number. Massett is the 



24 O UR NE W ALA SKA. 

shipyard of the Hydahs, the best canoe-makers on the con- 
tinent, who supply them to the other coast tribes. Here 
may be seen in all stages of construction these canoes, which, 
when completed, are such perfect models for service and of 
beauty. This is the abode of the aristocracy of Hydah 
land. Other villages are the offshoots from the parent 
colony, caused by family and tribal feuds and quarrels." 

Although not included within the limits of Alaska, being 
some fifteen miles south of its frontier, I am pleased to 
be able to give fair sketches of the remarkable Indian settle- 
ment of Metlakahtla, above referred to, not only as an in- 
stance of the advanced state of civilization to which some 
of the Pacific coast Indians have already been brought, but 
because it is an earnest of the enviable results which must 
surely crown our own endeavors, if properly applied, and 
therefore an encouragement to persevere. 

Metlakahtla is truly the full realization of the missionaries' 
dream of aboriginal restoration. The population is 1,200, 
and there are but six white persons in the place. Like the 
mission Indians at Fort Simpson, its residents have also a 
rifle company of forty-two men, a brass band, a two gun 
battery, a cooper shop, and a large co-operative store where 
almost any thing obtainable in Victoria can be bought. We 
visited this port on our return trip from Sitka, and were 
received with displays of bunting from various points, and 
a five-gun salute from the battery, with Yankee Doodle and 
Dixie from the band of thirteen pieces. The Union-Jack 
was flying. The church is architecturally pretentious and 
can seat 800 persons. It has a belfry and spire, vestibule, 
gallery across the front end, groined arches and pulpit 
carved by hand, organ and choir, Brussels carpet in the aisles„ 
stained glass windows, and all the appointments and em- 
bellishments of a first class sanctuary ; and it is wholly 
native handiwork ! This well ordered community occupy 
two-story shingled and clap-boarded dwelling houses of uni- 
form size, 25x50 feet, with three windows and gable ends and 
door in front, and inclosed flower gardens, and macada- 
mized sidewalks ten feet wide along the entire line of street. 
The chief peculiarity of these houses is, that none of them 
have chimneys, the apartments being heated by fires built 
on hearths in the center of the ground floor, and the smoke 
passing out through a flat cupola in the roof, after the fashion 
of Indian tenements in general. These people have also a 
large town hall or assembly room of the same capacity as 
the church, capable of accommodating the whole population. 
It is used for councils, balls, meetings, and for a drill room. 



ITINERARY. 25 

It is warmed by three great fires placed in the center of the 
building, and lighted by side lamps. The people dress 
very tastefully in modern garb, and I am not sure but they 
have the latest fashions. The women weave the cloth for 
all the garments, and there are gardens which afford vege- 
tables and fruit in abundance. It is as cleanly and orderly 
as the most punctilious Shaker settlement. A fine assort- 
ment of Hydah utensils, plaques, and carved work is on 
sale here. For exquisite beauty and quaint designs, there 
is nothing like Hydah ware to be found on the whole coast. 
A most beautiful table service of many pieces is on view at 
the U. S. National Museum in Washington, carved from 
black talcose slate. Miniature totem-poles two or three 
feet high, wrought of the same material, may also be bought 
at $5 to $7, American or Canadian money, both being 
current. 

From this point to American soil the distance is short. 
"Decensus Averno." The transition from the neat and 
thrifty settlements left behind to the dilapidated and half- 
deserted line of buildings — formerly a Russian trading post 
of rank, but now the U. S. port of entry of Alaska, is 
not flattering to spread-eagle pride. When the weather- 
stained Custom House officer formally comes on deck, 
conscientious American citizens " go below." It was 
said that nothing remunerative to any body ever fol- 
lowed his official visits. Usually it was " too foggy " 
for him to discover the vessel, and this fog became 
so constitutionally prevalent in all that district that smug- 
gled goods were nowhere apparent until, one unpropitious 
day last February, Collector Beecher by some timely hint 
conveyed through the circumlocution office, was enabled to 
unearth at Tongass no less than $45,000 worth of opium 
packed in casks purporting to cover furs. However, the 
Territorial regime is full of irregularities, affecting other 
things than revenue, all of which will be speedily corrected 
whenever domestic order shall succeed official chaos. But 
I shall venture no reflections. I will hold no " mirror up 
to nature," for never did nature see herself to better ad- 
vantage than upon that early morn at Tongass. There was 
no fog then ; the early sun had scarcely risen ; and all the 
morning lights which painters find it so difficult to limn, 
filled the firmament with their transparency. Not only the 
trees and rocks, and mountains, the moss, the kelp, the 
gulls on wing, the reek of the smoke-stack, and the rosy 
glow of morn, but even the fleecy films of vapor which, in 
voluptuous summer float high in the upper air — the lace- 



2b OUR NEW ALA SKA. 

like canopy embroidered on the blue — were mirrored on 
the water ; and each individual wave upturned by the cleav- 
ing prow formed reduplicating mirrors, like the facets of a 
gem, reflecting a consummate picture in each one. It was 
a moment of perfectly earthly peace. The impressionable 
young ladies on board declared that it was "just too lovely 
for any thing." These little maids from school all keep 
faithful diaries of the happenings aboard ship, nautical and 
social, the distances run each day, the places called at, what 
the steward laid for dinner, how many chickens there are 
left in coop, what the captain told them sub rosa, and all 
the special and private information to be picked up in the 
purser's state-room, and the " after-run." They make 
themselves " solid " with the officers, tip the steward and 
waiters, and even button-hole the first officer for best boats 
when little side excursions are afoot, for on those Alaska 
journeys frequent opportunities are offered to go ashore at 
the regular landings,of which there may be ten, besides spe- 
cial trips to places of universal interest ; after each visit the 
cabins and state-rooms are littered with ferns, mosses, wild 
flowers, clam shells, bits of mineral, slippery kelps, Indian 
curios and souvenirs of all sorts brought aboard. One of 
these little exploring parties once came across a member of 
the ship's crew digging a hole in the ground on a secluded 
point, and when he told them he was to get three dol- 
lars for burying a dead Chinaman who had been sent over 
from the steamer in the yawl, they were paralyzed. The 
body lay on the ground beside him, covered with a coat. 
In their view such a summary disposal of a corpse was not 
at all in accordance with civilized customs, but it seemed to 
be approved in Alaska. This incident was of course duly 
noticed in the diaries, with comments. So also was the ad- 
venture of the " rooster and the cook." The chicken coop, 
it seems, stood on the hurricane deck in the lee of one of 
the paddle-boxes, and passengers would often stop on their 
matutinal turns aloft to inspect or feed the feathered 
inmates, and speculate upon the uncertainties and vicissi- 
tudes of galley life. On these occasions the chickens were 
always inclined to be sociable and would scuffle with each 
other for donations ; but it was remembered that whenever 
the cook or his assistant, both of whom were Chinamen, ap- 
proached the coop, the apprehensive flock fled to the rear 
and bunched up in the corners. They knew the difference, 
and no wonder ! One by one the fatted victims were sum- 
marily withdrawn and served as soup or fricassee, until at 
last the cutest of them all, an old rooster who had hitherto 



ITINERARY. 27 

evaded the intruded hand, was fairly cornered ; yet he did 
not succumb nor faint. Watching his chance, he slipped 
John's grip, and getting free on deck, at last he gave both 
the Chinamen a desperate chase around the texas and the 
smoke-stacks, this way, and that way, and back again, 
headed off at every turn, feathers flying, pig-tails streaming, 
all hands cackling and squawling, and every passenger look- 
ing on quite interested. At last, utterly exhausted, the 
rooster was neatly coraled in a bunch of life-preservers 
(which were nothing to him then), when he suddenly took 
wing, and with one defiant and despairing shriek, flew over- 
board and was drowned ! He deliberately committed sui- 
cide rather than go to pot ; so he escaped the ignominy, but 
the passengers lost their salad. 

I am quite sure, if I desired a complete epitome of the 
voyage, with no details omitted, I could find it in one of 
these same records; but as I am not likely to meet any of 
these " Vassar Girls Abroad," it only remains for me to re- 
cite the bare fact of our due arrival at Wrangell, which was 
fifteen years ago a town of considerable importance, where 
large parties fitted out daily for the Stickeen mines located 
nearly three hundred miles inland across the country in 
British Columbia. There the whole region is even now 
filled with deserted cabins. There was a temporary glim- 
mer of brightness for Alaskan prospects, in the first dawn 
of the new " purchase," when no less than 3,000 people 
congregated here to " outfit." Then there were many shops 
and stores, and warehouses on the wharf, and all sorts of 
rude places of amusement, and a motly and unruly crowd 
such as always gathers at a frontier town. Even old hulks 
were improvised as boarding-houses. But the prospects 
" petered out," not for lack of mineral so much as lack of 
suitable mechanical appliances, and so both the mines and 
the town are now almost dead. There is a picturesque 
block-house on a convenient hill, and a grassy plaza with 
barracks where troops were quartered then, and a couple of 
small churches, Catholic and Protestant, on the crest of a 
ridge, with plank walks leading to them, but the barracks 
are now occupied by the Indian Mission of Mr. Young, and 
the bethels and brothels are boarded up. Every thing is dilap- 
idated and worn of paint, aud spacious hostelries where board 
was once $3.00 per day, have already tumbled into ruins, with 
the walls collapsed and the roofs fallen in. There are about 
500 people left, chiefly Indians, whose better houses, many 
of them painted, occupy a picturesque curve of the shore 
and a point of land which projects into the harbor. A foot 



28 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

bridge also leads across an estuary to what is an island 
when the tide is full, and here are some of the best built 
houses and elaborate totem-poles. This part of the town 
has at least the charm of supreme novelty, and I dare say 
there is nothing like it to be seen in all Alaska; a hint of 
which visitors should take due note and govern themselves 
accordingly. I suppose that there will be a better civiliza- 
tion ere many years have passed, but this peculiar architec- 
ture and ornamentation stand to-day, not only as striking 
illustrations of the idiosyncracies of a peculiar people, but 
of their native capabilities, made more creditable and more 
conspicuous from lack of superior tools with which to cut, 
hew, carve and smooth. When it is borne in mind that 
their boards are split from hemlocks, riven with an ax, and 
planed with adzes, and that shaping and finishing is done 
with rude knives, it is apparent that the impartial judge 
will allow them many points for ingenuity and skill. This 
special subject I leave for a future chapter. 

Wrangell lies at the mouth of the Stickeen. One of 
these days not distant, a steamboat excursion up the 
Stickeen River through the great canon which it has cut 
for its passage through the mountains, will be one of the 
most popular and exciting of all the experiences on 
this continent. There is steamboat navigation for one 
hundred and sixty miles from its mouth to Glenora, 
up to which point the river is usually clear of ice 
by the middle of April. There the Dominion custom- 
house is located on the supposed boundary line, and 
the scenery is of the most romantic character all the 
way, the wonderful creations of nature being diversified by 
trading posts, stores, and mining stations along the banks. 
Several fine glaciers are to be seen en route, and a number 
of tributary streams or branches flow into the main river. 
From the head of navigation there are canoe routes and 
overland trails for pack trains which lead to the gold mines 
at Deese Lake, eighty miles further, and to the noted quartz 
lodes and placers of Cariboo and Cassiar in British Colum- 
bia. The strip of territory owned by the United States and 
lying along the coast is only ten leagues wide by the Rus- 
sian Treaty of 1828 with Great Britain ; and the continual 
difficulties which arise between customs officials along an 
indeterminate boundary line, makes its speedy official estab- 
lishment in every respect very desirable. 

The distance between Victoria and Wrangell is a little 
less than eight hundred miles, the whole route so land- 
locked that not a qualm of sea-sickness is permitted to come 




U. S. TRIPODS IN CHANNEL. 



ITINERARY. 3 1 

aboard, and all the emissaries of Neptune lie low among 
the grottoes of the deep. The further northward ones goes 
the grander the scenery becomes, the higher and more 
rugged grow the mountains, the whiter their caps of snow, 
the denser the surrounding forests, and the more numerous 
the streams which leap from the lips of the crags. There 
are fjords deeper and blacker than the Saguenay, open chan- 
nels greener than Niagara. Peaks are piled on peaks in 
most tumultuous forms. Outlines serrated and sharp cut 
the upper sky. Black ravines and dazzling patches of 
snow alternate. Scars seam the entire sides of lofty moun- 
tains, where the spring avalanches have scathed them of 
every vestige of soil and vegetation. The inlets are often 
enveloped in fogs, but when they lift, the surprises are 
bewildering. Sometimes it is the bases of the mountains 
which are revealed, and sometimes the peaks, with a filmy 
drapery floating athwart their sides, or a golden fleece hung 
gracefully over their broad shoulders. At Kasaan there is 
a wharf and cannery with an annex of Indian cabins like an 
old time negro quarter. There is a fleet of splendid canoes 
employed in the fishery, drawn high and dry upon the beach 
ready for use, but now tenderly covered with sails and mats 
to protect them from the alternate damp and sunshine. 
The hulk of an old sloop long since past usefulness, lies on 
the shore cracked, seamed, dismantled and keeled over. 
She has a history, for once she smuggled goods for the old 
Russian magnate, Carl V. Baronovick, and carried many a 
goodly cargo through the intricate water-ways which it did 
not pay to watch. Out in the stream the U. S. sur- 
veying steamer lies at anchor, with every thing taut and 
trim and her brass aglow with polish, like the " knocker of 
a big front door." She has done lots of work on the coast, 
and marked out the intricate and dangerous channels with 
tripods and can-buoys. Some twelve miles off is a Hydah 
village — one of the few to be found in Alaska — which 
excursionists sometimes visit for the collection of curios. 
Its head chief, " Scowl," who was quite a celebrity in his 
day, died two years ago, leaving a good house and an hon- 
orable pedigree, vouched for by no less than four totem- 
poles set up inside, and a tall one in front, outside, made of 
yellow cedar, which grows abundantly in the vicinity, and 
is exceedingly beautiful, taking a finish like satin wood, 
with an odor as distinctive as that of sandal-wood. At 
Salmon Bay the steamer stopped at another cannery to 
receive some three hundred barrels of salted salmon, and 
again at Naha Bay, near which there is a beautiful lake 



32 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

connecting with the ocean by a tidal passage, into which 
the salmon were crowding to spawn. There is a double fall 
at the outlet of this lake ; the fresh water pouring out when 
the tide is low, and the salt water flowing in when the tide 
is high. Here the salmon were wedged so tightly for the 
whole length of two miles that they could not move at 
times. The rise of the tide is some eighteen feet and the 
entire channel, from the surface to the bottom, was jammed 
and packed solid, so that if a plank were laid upon the liv- 
ing mass, a person might have walked dry shod across it. 
This is hard to believe, but easy to understand when it is 
known that during the salmon " run," from early spring to 
August, the vast schools which swarm along the shores and 
fill the bays and inlets, swim in compacted masses six feet 
thick, so that it is impossible to thrust a spear or lift a boat- 
hook without impaling a fish. In rivers of Oregon the 
salmon often obstruct a ford so that horses can not pass, 
but in Alaska the astounding aggregate is infinitely greater, 
and large rivers being few, they crowd into available inlets 
as frightened sheep were never known to block a gangway. 
Juneau, or Harrisburg, is the metropolis of Alaska — a 
town of several streets and shops, stores and restaurants, with 
a trading-post, a dance-house, a brewery, a barber-shop, and 
a dramatic company. It is the depot for the rich placer 
mines behind the mountains back of it, and the live center 
from which radiates whatever of excitement there is in the 
territory, outside of " government circles " at Sitka. Gold 
ore was first discovered on Douglas Island, opposite, where 
there is to-day in operation the largest stamp mill in the 
world ; but it has since been found to exist in paying quan- 
tities on the main-land in the mountains back of Juneau. 
An Indian revealed the secret, for a consideration, to two 
prospectors named Harris and Juneau, who at once staked 
out claims and began to pan out pay dirt and nug- 
gets of free gold handsomely. The town is named for each 
of them respectively, though the post-office is now called 
Harrisburg. It is growing rapidly and is orderly. The 
miners themselves are temperate, industrious, and well- 
behaved, and are gradually gathering around them a com- 
munity of good citizens. One of the best of the miners, 
Michael Powers, with two others, was unfortunately killed 
last winter by an accidental cave in the " basin " where the 
placers are being worked. The population of Juneau in 
winter, when the mines are idle, is fuliy 1,500. The laborers 
employed are chiefly Indians, with a few Chinese. There 
are two villages of Indian huts built along the shore, one 



ITINERARY. 33 

on either side of the town. They belong to different tribes 
who are traditional enemies — the Auks and the Takus — but 
they live amicably enough with the white settlement sand- 
wiched in between them. Fleets of canoes ornament the 
sloping shores in front of the cabins, and wolfish dogs, 
brindled and yellow, with bushy tails and pricked ears, 
doze and loll in front of every door. As a general rule their 
bark is not dangerous. Beyond these dusky suburbs there 
are burying grounds, with strips of white and colored mus- 
lin tied to the tips of poles to indicate the graves, which 
would otherwise be lost in the teeming undergrowth that 
overruns them in a single season. It is a motley throng 
which crowds the wharf on " steamer day," but not alto- 
gether so savage as might be imagined. It is purely cos- 
mopolitan, and one may land and move about the throng or 
through the streets of the town and not be stared at as he 
would be in any equal village of New England. It may be 
accepted for granted that there is not a white man in all the lot 
as "fresh" and "tender" as the tourist who supremely con- 
templates him with his eye-glasses, quite aloof. All of them 
have " traveled." Some of the stores are branches run by 
leading merchants of Oregon and San Francisco, and I 
doubt not one could find the latest cut of trowsers at the 
tailor's shop. Baths there are, hot and cold, and shaving- 
parlors with veritable black men behind the chairs, quite 
comfortable and luxurious to observe and enjoy. There 
were no less than five negroes in Juneau last year. Verily, 
the African is as widely scattered as the Israelite ! Here 
the tide falls twenty-five feet, and when it is dead low water 
all the piles of the wharf stand out in stark alignment, 
crusted with barnacles hung with sea-weed and bored by 
teredos. So destructive is this well-known sea-worm that 
piles have to be renewed every two years at a great deal of 
labor and inconvenience, and it is not unusual to find them 
actually eaten in two below the water-line. A ferry boat runs 
half hourly from Juneau to Douglas Island, where there is 
a saw-mill and a considerable settlement connected with the 
stamp-mill and ore-beds. In the center of the harbor is a 
pretty island, with a point stretching out from the main- 
land half the distance to meet it, on which there is an arti- 
ficial marble monument. Back of the point is a ravine with 
a goodly stream tumbling out of it in a series of cascades, 
discolored with the tailings of the sluices back in the moun- 
tains which have contributed to swell its volume. Up the 
timbered slope which skirts it a precarious foot-path leads 
to the "basin," along the edges of steep precipices and 



34 OUR NEW ALA SKA. 

through thickets of " devil's club " and luscious salmon- 
berry bushes. 

From Juneau to Chilkat and Pyramid Harbor, so called 
from a wedge-shaped island in the center of the channel, it 
is a twelve hours' run. Here are the two largest salmon 
canneries in the territory, together employing over one 
hundred hands. From this place a novel excursion may be 
made in canoes or boats to the Chilkat village, where the 
famous blankets are made. This tribe numbers a thousand 
souls at least. The women are expert manufacturers of 
baskets and mats, as well as blankets. The first are made 
from grass and the dried fiber of sea-kelps; the blankets 
from the wool of the mountain sheep and goats, woven by 
hand and dyed with native dyes in strangely wrought 
designs of blue, black and yellow. These are chiefly used 
in dances and on fete days. From Chilkat to Kilisnoo is 
the next stage. Here there is a cannery and phosphate 
works — phosphate made from the scraps of herring after the 
oil is extracted. 

With a run through Lynn Channel to Glacier Bay, where 
a day is passed in viewing the greatest wonder of the coast, 
and thence through Cross Sound, we finally reach Sitka, 
which is usually the terminal objective point of the long 
voyage, but is really a considerable distance on the home 
stretch, accomplished by a long detour to the northward, for 
Sitka lies in latitude fifty-seven degrees, while Chilkat is in 
latitude fifty-nine degrees, thirty minutes. In the gray of 
the early morn we can faintly discern the spectral summit of 
Mount Edgecumb right before us, and trace the dusky out- 
lines of the rambling town, the outlying islands, and the 
hull of the Pinta, U. S. man-of-war lying restfully 
at anchor a few cables length from the government pier. 

Thus hastily touching at points of interest, I have 
attempted to give the tourist a general idea of what he is to 
see. In a general way also, he will like to know what to 
take for the voyage. Presumably he will not require an 
evening dress, even should a ball be given at the " Castle 
of the Governor." Indispensible, however, are great-coats 
and gossamers, heavy shoes, warm underclothing, and short 
skirts for ladies, as well as light wraps and thin garments of 
all sorts, traveling caps, and stout canes for glacier-climb- 
ing. Those who are fond of fishing and hunting may carry 
shot-guns and tackle for both salt and fresh water use. A 
blue-fish outfit, with heavy sinker, and a black-bass rod, 
with reel and line, will be sufficient. Steamer chairs maybe 
bought at any port before leaving Victoria, and a half- 



ITINERA H Y. 



35 



dozen books will afford exceptionable pastime. Finally, if 
the officers of the line would only provide a steam launch, 
forty feet long, with a compound engine, to burn both wood 
and coal, and half a dozen skiffs for trolling, the service 
would be quite complete, and the passengers correspond- 
ingly happy. 




Apv. 



KLOOTCHMAN S. 



AS EXCURSIONISTS SEE IT. 



There is undoubtedly a tendency on the part of enthused 
and susceptible visitors to turn the bright side of Alaska 
always toward the light, for surely there was never scenery 
more grand, or climate more delectable. From the first of 
June to the end of September, throughout the whole 
excursion season, the temperature is equable. One needs 
not perspire without exercise. He is always cool and needs 
never be cold. Morning fogs burn off by ten o'clock ; rain 
seldom falls ; there is scarcely wind enough to fill a sail ; and 
the headway of the steamer makes a grateful breeze. On 
shore there are few insects or flies, no reptiles, and scarcely 
a butterfly or beetle. The whole excursion of fully 2,000 
miles is one long blithesome holiday without a blemish. The 
thermometer ranges imperturbably and conscientiously 
between sixty degrees and seventy degrees. 

Looking back over my past sojourn on the North Pacific, 
and my saunterings along its extended coast, I am at first 
bewildered by the retrospect. Remote from other men, and 
from evidences of the very existence of men, except when 
intermittent glimpses are vouchsafed, I seem to have been 
adrift in a new creation, such as is sometimes outlined in 
our dreamland. I am lost in the height of the mountains, 
the depth of the sea, and the immensity of space. Every 
thing is on so enlarged a scale that there is no familiar 
standard of comparative measurement. When I stand in 
the heart of the Rockies I am impressed by the environ- 
ment of mountain chains and snow-clad peaks. I am 
appalled by the rugged grandeur of their height, and the 
interminable depth of their canons and chasms. The 
senses are crushed and oppressed by their overwhelming 
weight. But in this archipelago of mountains and land- 
locked seas, objects individually so magnificent in them- 
selves as to startle the senses are multiplied and reduplicated 
until they paralyze one's comprehension ! Looking forward 
from the deck of the steamer, through a long vista of head- 
lands, whose clear-cut outlines are set against the sky in 
graduated shades of blue, I see a chevaux de /rise of snow- 



AS EXCURSIONISTS SEE IT. 37 

capped peaks so high that Mount Washington or White 
Top would seem like hills beside them. Astern, or on 
either side abeam, the same stupendous view looms up in 
wondrous counterpart. Between the wave-washed foot-hills 
in the foreground close at hand, the sea is placid like a 
mirror, and all the gigantic firs which clothe the mountain 
side, the scores which the avalanche has made on the rocks, 
and the waterfalls which fall from perpendicular heights, 
higher than Yosemite, are pictured there in sublime reflec- 
tions. At night the glory of the stars and constellations is 
repeated from infinite heights to infinite depths, and the 
round, full moon seems regent of the whole universe. In 
land-locked basins, so small that the ship could scarcely 
turn, great whales disport, and all the battles of the brine 
are fought, like combats in a prize ring. It is funny to see 
whales playing in what seems to be a mountain lake, and, of 
course, all the sea lions rear up on the adjacent rocks and 
smile. Occasionally there are nights when the crests of all 
the waves are luminous, and the lustrous phosphoresence 
piles up under the prow in lumps of liquid light, and streams 
off in the receding wake of the vessel. Looking over the 
bow, a watchful eye will detect large fish darting aside to 
avoid the advance of the vessel, leaving the scintillations 
and curves of fire as they double and turn. The passengers 
watch these submarine pyrotechnics by the hour. 

Points and curves, headlands fiords and bays, sea-worn 
rocks and wooded islets, rocks and reefs awash at low water, 
narrow channels -and precipitous heights, towering peaks 
and shadowy valleys, luxuriant forests and kelp-covered 
shores, waterfalls projected from dizzy heights, glaciers 
pressing toward the sea, and splitting off with thunder 
tones and roaring splash — these characterize the scenery 
and the landscape throughout the entire voyage. Occasion- 
ally an Indian village of huts or tents is seen on shore, or a 
canoe load of natives sweeps by under pressure of blanket- 
sail and paddle. Of course, throughout this extended 
coast-line, there are many islands of many different 
phases — some of them mere rocks, to which the kelps 
cling for dear life, like stranded sailors in a storm ; 
while others are gently rounded mounds, wooded with 
fir ; and others still, precipitous cliffs standing breast 
deep in the waves. Steaming through the labyrinths 
of straits and channels which seem to have no outlets ; 
straining the neck to scan the tops of snow-capped peaks 
which rise abruptly from the basin where you ride at anchor ; 
watching the gambols of great whales, thresher-sharks and 



38 OUR NEW ALASKA, 

herds of sea-lions, which seem as if penned up in an 
aquarium, so completely are they inclosed by the shadowy 
hills — one watches the strange forms around him with an in- 
tensity of interest which almost amounts to awe. 

In this weird region of bottomless depths, there are no 
sand beaches or gravelly shores. All the margins of main- 
land and islands drop down plump into inky fathoms of 
water, and the fall of the tide only exposes the rank yellow 
weeds which cling to the damp crags and slippery rocks, 
and the mussels and barnacles which crackle and hiss when 
the lapping waves recede. When the tide sets in, great 
rafts of algae, with stems fifty feet long, career along the sur- 
face ; millions of jelly fish and anemones crowded as closely 
as the stars in the firmament ; great air bulbs, with streamers 
floating like the long hair of female corpses ; schools of por- 
poises and fin-back whales rolling and plunging headlong 
through the boiling foam ; all sorts of marine and mediter- 
ranean fauna pour in a ceaseless surge, like an irresistible 
army. Hosts of gulls scream overhead, or whiten the 
ledges, where they squat content or. run about feeding ; 
ducks and sandpeeps, eagles, ospreys, fish-crows and king- 
fishers, the leaping salmon and the spouting whales, fill up 
the foreground with animated life. Here and there along 
the almost perpendicular cliffs the outflow of the melting 
snow in the pockets of the mountains leaps down in dizzy 
waterfalls. From the canons which divide the foot-hills, 
cascades pour out into the brine, and all their channels are 
choked with salmon crowding toward the upper waters. I 
could catch them with my hands as long as my strength en- 
dured, so helpless and infatuated are these creatures of pre- 
destination. At the heads of many of these rivulets there 
are lakes in which dwell salmon trout, spotted with crimson 
spots as large as a pea; the rainbow trout with its iridescent 
lateral stripe; and his cousin germain, the ' cut-throat trout,' 
slashed with carmine under the gills. And there is another 
trout, most familiar to the eye in eastern waters, and doubly 
welcome to the sight in this far-off region — the Salvelinus 
Canadensis or ' sea trout,' which I have recognized these 
many years as a separate species. Here he is in his gar- 
niture of crimson, blue and gold, just like his up stream 
neighbors of New England and the Provinces, only here he 
is no " brook trout run to sea," for all the denizens of Alaska 
brooks are Salvelinus irideus, and not at all like him! and 
no naturalist claims that these last two are identical. 

Sometimes we cross the mouth of a sound open to the 
sea, where the full force of the Pacific waves rolls in to swell 



AS EXCURSIONISTS SEE IT. 39 

the symphony of the inshore surf. There is a stretch of 
thirty miles across Queen Charlotte's sound, and of fifteen 
miles at Millbank, where even in ordinary weather passen- 
gers show the effects of the motion ; but these disagree- 
ments are brief. Some of the cloud effects are very grand, 
stretching, as they do, for scores of miles half-way up the 
mountain sides, overhanging the peaks or piled on top. 
Sometimes a blue pyramid or cone will be seen projected 
above a mass of clouds which has obscured the whole land- 
scape, just as the glory appeared to Jacob when he slept. 
Fogs are of almost daily occurrence. In the chilly mornings 
the hills are wrapped in a thick mantle, and all the little foot- 
hills are cuddled like bantlings in the fleecy vapors ; but 
when the warm sun mounts, the fogs disappear and the day 
comes out almost cloudless. 

After all one can not epitomize Alaska in a brief synopsis 
or resumt. There it stands before you in its inimitable 
wilderness of forest-clad mountains, eternal and snow- 
capped, outlined by the clouds and circumscribed by the 
sea : and one scarcely knows more of what lies on the sur- 
face of the one than under the billows of the other. The 
marvelous and the amazing are combined with startling effect 
wherever we go. Many of the wonders of the Yellowstone 
country are reduplicated here. We have in Alaska hot 
springs, lava beds and volcanoes as well; a volcano on 
Chernabura island, Cook's inlet, is said to be in active and 
sulphurous operation ; and these together with the unique 
interest of Russian and Indian life added, and the appar- 
ently incongruous juxtaposition of arctic and tropical fea- 
tures, which are continually presented, render the experi- 
ences of the tourist so delightful, and so novel withal, that 
it needs no artificial adjuncts to give them expression, and 
no new lights and shades in the coloring to make them at- 
tractive. The answering mirror held up to nature reflects 
on every side a goodly picture. It forecasts a future 
replete with promise. 



ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED. 



But what of Alaska that is practical ? Is it frigid ? 
sterile ? God-forsaken ? a land of perpetual ice ? Will any- 
thing grow there ? Can any considerable population, apart 
from the coast, subsist on the country ? Are the natives 
any less savage than the seals and bears they hunt ? Are 
the traces of Russian occupation Siberian or barbarian ? 
Did the Muscovites leave any thing at all which Uncle 
Samuel wants ? Is there any gold or other mineral there ? 
Any thing which the Creator does not regret having made ? 
In a word, is our new possession good for any thing at all, 
except for another " National Park ? " a resort for tourists 
and mid-summer ramblers ? I answer in my preface with 
a broad declaration, and with equal emphasis on the title 
page. 

Years ago, when we gathered in the Louisiana purchase 
for the sum of $15,000,000 — a tract in itself nearly as large 
as Europe — there were immense areas of it which were 
deemed absolutely worthless ; and these were set off, in the 
transaction, against the more fertile tracts, with their diver- 
sity of climate, soil and vegetation. Especially, that very 
considerable portion of it which is now known as the Ter- 
ritory of Dakota — although a population of more than half 
a million have made it the peer of any state in every thing 
but privilege — was disregarded ; it "didn't count." On the 
maps it was marked " American Desert." At the best, in 
the opinion of merely superficial observers, it was only an 
illimitable buffalo range, rainless and treeless, whose russet- 
colored grass dried up in June for lack of moisture, and 
was worthless. Now it is the most valuable and productive 
portion of the entire Louisiana purchase ; capable of 
feeding the world with grain ; subsisting domestic herds as 
countless as the buffalo which once grazed over its broad 
expanse ; munificent in its out-put of precious metals ; 
underlaid with coal measures which form the subsidiary 
reserves of the region lying west of the Mississippi River ; 
seamed and interspersed with out-croppings of the finest 
building stone yet discovered ; flowing with milk and the 



ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED. 41 

richness of its dairy products. Even the " Bad Lands " 
which were designated pre-eminently so, in contradistinction 
from others esteemed not quite so bad, have become the 
chosen grazing ground of herds which supply the East with 
beef, and of horses which bid fair to rival the swiftest and 
sturdiest stock of Kentucky and Vermont. So far from 
being sterile, the soil of the " Bad Lands " has been proved 
actually better for general farming than the heavy tenacious 
loam of the Red River Valley, just because it is lighter. 

Not less erroneously regarded was the illimitable territory 
of the British Northwest, whose agricultural possibilities are 
now ascertained to be co-extensive with her boundaries. 
This impression of incapacity was founded on its hyper- 
borean situation. But practical men who had to deal with 
practical measures, upon which the very life and perpetuity 
of the Canadian Dominion depended, went forward in 
advance of the projected railroad through the country, and 
ploughed and planted at intervals of every twenty miles, to 
test the quality of soil and climate ; and when without 
tillage or protection, the answering grain came up in 
bounteous profusion and ripened before the autumn frost, 
no better assurance of the future was desired ; and now the 
directors of the Canadian Pacific Railroad confidently pre- 
dict that the new Northwest will have fifty millions of people 
a century hence, with capacity to feed themselves and the 
rest of the world, if need be. Indeed, it seems incredible, 
and altogether unaccountable, to those who infer that the 
climates of all high latitudes are rigorous and inhospitable, 
to read in the current newspaper telegrams of the day, that 
spring wheat-sowing commenced at Maple Creek on 
February 4th, 1886, six hundred miles west of hyperborean 
Winnipeg, on the same parallel of latitude ; that the tem- 
perature ranged from fifty-four to fifty-seven degrees at 
Fort McLeod during the corresponding week ; and that the 
trains of the Canadian Pacific Railroad were all running on 
time through the snowdrifts of the mountain division. 

Maple Creek, lying at the east base of the rocky moun- 
tains, feels the influence of the Chinook winds which are 
wafted from the warm bosom of the Kuro Siwo, or Japan 
current, although they have to pass over four great moun- 
tain ranges — the Cascades, Gold, Selkirk and Rockies, each 
of which helps to cool and condense the atmosphere — 
whereas access to the interior of Alaska is obstructed only 
by the single barrier of the coast range. 

I have traveled over a great part of the British Northwest 
and British Columbia, and have read the official reports of 



42 OUR NEW ALA SKA . 

their geological surveys, railway engineers, Hudson Bay 
officials and Indian inspectors ; I have gathered together 
all the facts I could find in books, and listened to the tales 
of miners and traders, and old settlers whose lives have 
been passed in the ultima thule ; and I have supplemented 
the whole with the observations photographed on the eye ; 
and having gotten together all this testimony, and dis- 
covered that the physical features of this vast region and 
Alaska are much alike with each one's advantages and 
objections reciprocally counterbalanced by the vagaries of 
isothermal lines, I am prepared to believe that Alaska is 
worth all that was paid for it, and to predict that in due 
course of time it will surprise the expectations of its pur- 
chasers more than despised Dakota or the Northwest has 
done. The elements of wealth pervade it ; they are 
through, above and around it. 

Misconceptions of the productive capabilities of a country 
spring from imperfect diagnosis. No mere superficial 
observation will suffice; no hasty conclusions predicated 
upon general appearances. Nothing but a thorough 
examination of the soil, flora and fauna will furnish 
testimony of an absolute character that can be relied on 
Dakota was condemned because her summer rain-fall was 
meager, and the dry and arid appearance of every thing 
contrasted most unfavorably with the verdant green of 
eastern localities. The Northwest was condemned for like 
reasons — with the inferential objection of high latitude 
added ; but there were hidden influences underneath the 
soil, begotten by the very conditions which seemed adverse, 
that served to counteract them. The book of nature was 
left wide open, but men neglected to turn its pages. A 
high latitude is very naturally suggestive of cold, but in the 
code of climatology latitude is less arbitrary than isothermal 
lines. Even in countries truly frigid there is a season of 
respite from inexorable congelation. Most people imagine 
Iceland to be ice-clad and ice-bound the whole year round, 
and yet its summer lawns are verdant with rich grass, and 
the meadows are spangled with buttercups and daisies ; 
pigeons congregate upon the house-roofs, and the cows 
come home from pasture with the same straggling gait as 
the kine of other lands. Nine-tenths of the children at 
school believe the Arctic zone to be a realm of perpetual 
darkness and intolerable frigidity without a break, and 
would hoot with incredulity if told that its inhabitants 
swelter in the heat of her mid-summer sun, and that nothing 
but its brief duration prevents a high development of ver- 



ECONOMICALL Y CONSIDERED. 43 

dure. But, compared with Alaska, the blessings and 
fruition of other northern lands in either hemisphere are 
insignificant — British Columbia alone excepted. 

Of course the modifying influence of the Japan Current, 
or Pacific Gulf Stream, which projects its vast volume of 
tepid water athwart the Aleutian Isles, is already well 
understood, but the results one sees there are hard to real- 
ize, and the reports we hear are listened to as mariners' 
tales. The effect of this warm current is equivalent to 
twenty degrees of latitude, that is to say, the same products 
which are found in latitude forty degrees on the Atlantic 
thrive in latitude sixty degrees on the Pacific, which is 
but little north of the location of Sitka, and on a scale far 
more generous. Fruits, vegetables, plants, and trees are 
not only of greater size, but their yield is manifold, though 
it is fair to say, that the quality of flavor is not always as 
good. Oranges, which do not mature in the East above 
the latitude of Port Royal, S. C, grow to perfection in 
Shasta, California, in latitude forty-one degrees, which is a 
little higher than the latitude of New York City. Shasta also 
produces cotton, limes, soft-sheli almonds, and superb 
prunes. By the same ratio of climatic progression, tomatoes, 
musk-melons and grapes ripen in the latitude of Victoria, 
but better back of the coast-range than on the seaboard, 
because of the higher temperature and immunity from exces- 
sive fogs and rain. 

The influence of ocean currents in distributing heat 
throughout the globe, and especially of the warm currents 
which modify the climate of the polar regions, is set forth 
very intelligibly in Croll's " Climate and Climatology," pub- 
lished by the Appletons. By that influence, places which 
are now buried under permanent snow and ice were once 
covered with luxurious vegetation, and arctic regions 
enjoyed a comparatively mild and equable climate ; and 
vice versa. Hitherto this influence seems to have been 
enormously underestimated. Really, the amount of heat 
borne north by the Gulf Stream, whose volume and temper- 
ature have been ascertained with an approach to certainty, 
is computed to be more than equal to all the heat received 
from the sun within a zone of the earth's surface extending 
thirty-two miles on each side of the equator. Or, in other 
words, as a little calculation will demonstrate, the amount 
of equatorial heat carried into temperate and polar regions 
by this stream alone is equal to one-fourth of all the heat 
received from the sun by the North Atlantic from the 
Tropic of Cancer up to the Arctic Circle. But there 



44 OUR NEW ALA SKA . 

are other great oceanic currents, especially the Kuro-Siwo, 
which, though not yet subjected to as careful mensuration, 
are believed to convey as much heat poleward as the Gulf 
Stream. Evidently, then, comparatively slight changes in 
the oceanic circulation would increase or decrease glacial 
conditions. The severity of climate, in Mr. Croll's view, is 
about as much due to the cooling effect of the permanent 
snow and ice as to an actual want of heat. An increase in 
the amount of warm water entering the Arctic Ocean, just 
sufficient to prevent the formation of permanent ice, is all 
that is really necessary to make the summers of Greenland 
as warm as those of England." It is obvious that a large 
decrease in its temperature and volume would lead to a state 
of things in northwestern Europe approaching to that which 
now prevails in Greenland. The causes which he assigns 
for changes in the volume and temperature of ocean cur- 
rents, he declares are actual and explicable, and by no 
means based on mere hypotheses ; all of which are set forth 
in a most intelligible and interesting manner in the volume 
referred to. Briefly epitomized, they may be stated in Mr. 
Crolls own words, as follows : 

" The causes of these changes may be found in physical 
agencies, stimulated or checked by changes in the eccen- 
tricity of the earth's orbit, provided the heat-transferring 
power of such agencies is suffered to be operative by such 
geographical conditions as now exist, and which there is 
not an atom of evidence for believing have been materially 
altered since the glacial epoch. It is unnecessary to postu- 
late the submergencies or the elevation of continents, or the 
existence of extra inter-continental channels, transporting 
northward additional heat currents, and thus contributing to 
ameliorate the climate of the pole. The geographical condi- 
tions and the physical agencies which actually exist are amply 
sufficient to account for all the facts. When the eccentricity 
of the earth's orbit is at a high value, and the northern win- 
ter solstice is in perihelion, agencies are brought into opera- 
tion which make the southeast trade-winds stronger than 
the northeast, and compel them to blow over upon the 
northern hemisphere as far probably as the Tropic of Can- 
cer. The result is that all the great equatorial currents of 
the ocean are impelled into the northern hemisphere, which 
thus, in consequence of the immense accumulation of warm 
water, has its temperature raised, and snow and ice to a 
great extent must then disappear from the Arctic regions. 
When, contrariwise, the precession of the equinoxes brings 
round the winter solstice to aphelion, the condition of 



ECONOMICALL Y CONSIDERED. 45 

things on the two hemispheres is reversed, and the north- 
east trades then blow over upon the southern hemisphere, 
carrying the great equatorial currents along with them. 
The warm water being thus wholly withdrawn from the 
northern hemisphere, its temperature sinks enormously, 
and snow and ice begin to accumulate in temperate 
regions." 

Mr. Croll is also at pains to show that the mean interval 
between two consecutive interglacial periods (correspond- 
ing to the time required by the equinoctial point to pass 
from perihelion round to perihelion) is not, as is commonly 
assumed, 21,000, but 23,230 years. At intervals, therefore, 
of from 10,000 to 12,000 years the north pole will experi- 
ence the extreme of cold and the extreme of heat compat- 
ible with the coincident geographical conditions, and with 
the coincident eccentricity of the earth's orbit, the latter 
factor being ascertainable from Croll's tables. 

The final result, therefore, to which Mr. Croll would lead 
us is that those warm and cold periods which have alter- 
nately prevailed during past ages are simply the great secu- 
lar summers and winters of our globe, depending as truly 
as the annual ones do upon planetary motions, and like 
them also fulfilling some important ends in the economy of 
nature. 

It is needless to say that in a country as vast as Alaska 
the climate varies greatly ; but taken as a whole, it is more 
moderate and equable than that of any region of a corres- 
ponding latitude west of the Rocky Mountains — enjoying 
summers cooler, and winters much more mild. On its 
mountains there is perpetual snow, but not perpetual cold. 
There are large tracts of country where the mean yearly tem- 
perature is higher than that of Stockholm or Christiana of 
Europe, and where it is milder in winter, with a less fall of 
both rain and snow than in the southern portion of Sweden. 
Along the southern seaboard, which is the most habitable 
portion, the average temperature is forty-two degrees, with 
a common range between the zero point and a maximum of 
eighty degrees. Winter breaks up in March. Even in 
January, showers, such as we of the north have in April, 
alternate with the sunshine of May. 

John J. McLean, the U. S. Signal Officer at Sitka, has 
kindly furnished me the following synopsis of meteorological 
data for the winter of 1885-6. 



4 6 



OUR NEW ALA SKA . 



Date. 



Nov. 1885. 
Dec. " 

Jan. 1886. 
'Feb. " 



Mean Temp. 



40.2 

36. s 

29.2 
37-1 



Precipitation 
inches. 

9-65 
11,70 

7-36 
18.84 



Max. Temc 



50. 
50.5 



52.5 



Min. Temp. 



29-5 

3o.5 

4- 

24. 



In the region fully subject to the influence of the equato- 
rial current, flowers bloom and vegetation remains green and 
bright the winter through, with only a temporary suspension 
for rest and recuperation, and there is little save the 
almanac to remind the stranger that winter is in transit, 
though the native knows it from the increased rainfall. The 
warm air coming off from the Gulf Stream meets the colder air 
from the north and evokes precipitation, more abundant on 
the main land coast than on the islands, or in the interior. 
And it is this steaming moisture which clothes the mountains 
to the height of more than a thousand feet with their dense 
growths of spruce, pine, alder, hemlock, and cedar. But it is 
not always calm and mild and delectable in that region ; for 
the Custom House officer who keeps his lonesome watch at 
the tumble-down post at Tongass, which is the southernmost 
limit of our possession, tells how the winds begin to blow 
about the istof November and sometimes hard enough to 
upset the crow's nest at the look-out, and whisk the shingles 
off the roof. Frequently he is weather-bound for weeks, 
and once he did not taste fresh meat for four months. In 
mid-winter snow sometimes falls as deep as four feet, an 
immense precipitation, but it seldom remains unmelted for 
more than a fortnight, and the temperature rarely falls to 
zero. In January, 1886, it reached five degrees, the coldest 
of the season for many years. Capt. L. A. Beardslee, com- 
manding the U. S. Steamer, Jamestown, on the Alaska Sta- 
tion, in his official report for 1879, made at Sitka, mentions 
the appearance of robins, sparrows and buntings in March, 
with ducks flying north. He gives four hundred and sixty- 
nine hours of blue sky out of a total of seven hundred and 
forty-four hours for the thirty-one days of the month. In 
April about one day in seven is cloudy. The summer up to 
September is uniformly dry, with an equable temperature. 
September temperature is sixty degrees in the shade, and 
seventy degrees in the.sun, with a good deal of rain gener- 
ally. It is these early rains which prevent the ripening of 
grains on the coast. Cereals would do better in the interior 
despite the short summer. All kinds of vegetables mature 



ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED. 47 

on the coast, and potatoes grow large and keep through the 
winter as seed for the next year's planting. As testimony 
to the dryness of the climate, the captain says : " Our guns 
(vessel of war) do not suffer as on our own coast." Hali- 
but and herring fishing occurs in April. Salmon fishing 
begins May i. Coots, teal, widgeon and sprigtail ducks 
arrive in September ; canvas-backs and mallards in October; 
geese fly in November. 

A great deal more has been written about Alaska than the 
public imagines. A whole library of information is avail- 
able among the shelves of the Smithsonian Institution at 
Washington, and all the traits and industries and social life 
and religious belief of its peculiar peoples are illustrated in 
the cabinets of the U. S. National Museum. The reports 
of Prof. Dall alone, whose research covers a period of 
seventeen seasons in Alaska, published under Government 
auspices, afford such explicit information that no one need 
be ignorant of its capabilities. But such valuable emana- 
tions as Government reports and " pub. docs." are usually 
consigned to the archives, to be presently forgotten, or per- 
haps exhumed in exigency for special reference, while the 
imperfect and baser effusions of irresponsible contributors 
find universal currency. Mr. Bancroft, in his exhaustive 
" History of Alaska," comprising seven hundred and fifty 
pages, has also given us all the information which research 
can unearth, from the earliest discovery of the country to 
the present day. The volume comprises a most valuable 
and authentic repertory of facts, geographical, historical 
and economical, coast-wise and in-board, all of which are 
sufficient to demonstrate and prove that the difficulty to be 
encountered in the agricultural development of Alaska, is 
not a climatic one, but rather lies in the extremely rugged 
and mountainous character of that portion which is most 
salubrious and accessible, rendering the agricultural areas 
comparatively small and remote from each other. It can 
not be conjectured that the far-off interior will be available 
for generations, except for the very limited local demand 
which may possibly arise from the fortunate discovery of 
mines. Notwithstanding the habitable and cultivable 
modicum is relatively but little, it is of far greater extent 
and importance than would be supposed by those who fail 
to appreciate the magnitude of the territory as a whole; 
and it must ever be borne in mind that the area of Alaska is 
greater than that of the original thirteen states, and poor 
indeed must be that plat of earth, so magnificent in sweep 
and superficies, which does not contain the value inherent 



4§ UR NE W ALA SKA. 

of $7,500,000, the equivalent of the "Seward Purchase." 
What real or tangible foundation is there for the impression 
that it can not decently support more than a handful of 
population, when other countries, which resemble it in 
climate and character, support large numbers ? The con- 
tributory causes of a false impression have already been 
hinted at in the preface of this volume, and will presently 
be made more clearly to appear. 

In the latter years, with the discovery of the fertility of 
our illimitable prairies and their boundless capacity for 
grain, men's ideas of farm dimensions expanded in propor- 
tion, until an area of less than 10,000 acres came to be 
regarded as small. But the era of bonanza farms has now 
passed away ; the great wheat fields are being subdivided ; 
mixed industries are being introduced, and with constantly 
diminishing areas it will be possible presently to conceive 
of a farm no larger than those they have in Scotland or 
New England ; and a country may be considered agricul- 
tural that is not wholly an alluvial level destitute of trees and 
stones. Nay, it may even come within the grasp of thought 
to imagine acres tucked away in the folds of the Alaska 
mountains or spread out like blankets upon the waste ter- 
races of the upper Yukon. No lands were ever more fruit- 
ful than the hill counties of Judea, where the desert 
encroached very nearly upon the fertile tracts, and there 
are few countries where the climatic conditions are better 
adapted to diversified crops than the mountainous seaboard 
of Alaska. With regard to its local or indigenous products, 
let me recite the testimony of Captain Beardslee, of the U. 
S. Navy, given in 1879, soon after his arrival on the station, 
to wit : " We have been here three months, and during that 
period have been plentifully supplied with a variety of good 
vegetables, among which have been radishes, lettuce, car- 
rots, onions, cauliflower, cabbage, peas, turnips and pota- 
toes, and have a prospect during the coming month of beets, 
parsnips and celery, all of which look well in the gardens. 
The cauliflower and cabbage are as good as I ever ate ; the 
potatoes are just coming on, and are not quite ripe yet. I 
had this day (Sept. 17th) at my dinner, a potato grown here 
which was seven inches long, three inches thick, and weighed 
one pound five ounces, and it was one of many I have seen 
which would average from one-half to three-quarters of a 
pound in weight. Its flavor was good, and I shall, as do 
all other people here, depend upon this market for my 
winter's supply. There are many small gardens which 
return crops, as in all other countries, in proportion to the 



ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED. 49 

care and skill displayed in their cultivation. I have seen 
plenty of ' the watery walnuts dubbed potatoes,' but they 
came from gardens belonging to people so excessively pious 
that they trusted God for every thing, and put in no work 
themselves. Some of these gardens are over a single acre 
in extent, and have supplied good crops annually for quite 
a while. On Japonski and Biorka, and Survey and other 
islands there are hundreds of acres which could be culti- 
vated with profit, if the population were great enough to fur- 
nish customers. On Biorka, an island about twelve miles 
from here, there is now under cultivation a thriving vege- 
table garden of several acres, and these acres have 
been under annual cultivation for some years. So we eat 
and grow fat, when we thought to have had short commons." 
The captain is writing at Sitka, two hundred and forty 
miles up the coast from the southernmost boundary of the 
territory, where the climate may be supposed to be less 
favorable to perfect maturity of esculents. There are some 
good vegetable gardens at Wrangell and Tongass. Mr. 
and Mrs. Young, who have charge of the mission at Wran- 
gell, have a ranch of 1,600 acres at the mouth of the 
Stickeen River, on which they have successfully raised bar- 
ley and oats, but that is ninety-five miles southeast of Sitka. 
At the village of Haines, further up the Stickeen, there is 
another good ranch. Red raspberries are cultivated at 
Tongass. In the stores at Wrangell, I have seen fine pota- 
toes on sale in the month of August ; but these were not 
raised on the coast, but up the Stickeen River, one hundred 
and fifty miles back in the interior. As a matter of fact, 
the whole coast region is so like a vapor-bath or hot-house, 
that vegetation grows too exuberantly. There is no room 
for it, and indigenous plants crowd the economic products. 
If you fence a garden, or a grave-plot, the fence disappears 
from view the second year among the overgrowth. The 
same vegetable phenomena pertain to the interior, but there 
the summer temperature is inordinately higher, the skies 
are cloudless, and the supply of moisture derived from the 
reeking sub-soils and underlying strata of ice, abundantly 
sufficient. Wild hops, wild onions and wild berries grow in 
profusion; crab-apples, gooseberries, currants, black and red 
whortleberries, raspberries, cranberries, strawberries, red 
and white salmon berries (like raspberries, only four times 
the size), checker berries, pigeon berries, and angelica, fur- 
nish the native fruit supply. At berries we have to draw 
the line between Alaska and Southern British Columbia, 
which can supply the Dominion with choicest apples, pears, 



50 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

plums, peaches, grapes, cherries, etc. One curious feature 
of Alaska vegetation is that nearly every flower is succeeded 
by a berry. In the same latitude of Labrador on the 
Atlantic side, the only solitary fruit is a little yellow berry, 
locally known as " baked apple," which grows among the 
grass and lichens ; and spruce sticks, no more than eight 
inches in diameter, illustrate the best forest growth. Why 
don't the Canadian Government remove its two thousand 
pinched and starving population from Labrador to British 
Columbia at the public expense ? They would earn their 
transportation in a year. 

As stock raising is the remunerative complement of every 
well constituted farm, it could be prosecuted by the Alas- 
kan granger with marked advantage. Certainly the climate 
is vastly more propitious than in Northern Minnesota and 
Dakota, where the grazing of fine sheep and the best 
blooded cattle is now prosecuted with signal profit. Like 
the bonanza wheat fields of the Northwest, so the illimitable 
cattle ranges of the further west are being sub-divided. 
Diversity of industry has become a necessity and a watch- 
word. Gradually the wheat fields and the cattle ranges 
are over-lapping and dove-tailing into each other. Very 
rapidly the farmer of the West is driving the desert before 
him. The developments of each succeeding year make it 
more and more obvious that the encroachment of the home- 
steader upon the grazing lands can not be checked. The 
Denver Tribune says : — " Men have stood in line a hundred 
deep at the Land Offices waiting their turns to enter land 
upon which as little rain falls as in the most arid spot east 
of the Rocky Mountains. If this move can be made to 
pay them it simply means that all the plains will be home- 
steaded within a few years. It means that the large herds 
will disappear and that the lands will be fenced by their 
real owners. In short, it forebodes another change in the 
evolution of the arid cattle-grazing business greater than 
any that has gone before." 

Finally when all the land is homesteaded, men will look 
to Alaska. And why not ? Says Bancroft : — " Gjnasses 
thrive almost everywhere on the low-lands. Kodiak is a 
good grazing country, capable of sustaining large' droves of 
cattle. On the Aleutian Islands trees do_riot^grow, but the 
grasses are luxuriant." Lieutenant Schwatka in his report of 
the interior, speaks enthusiastically of the upland meadows 
and the grass-grown bluffs. Capt. Beardslee says : — " I am 
not sufficiently posted in the mysteries of a granger's pro- 
fession to undertake to speak very positively as to the num- 



EC0N0M1CALL Y CONSIDERED. 5 1 

ber of stock of any kind which any given amount of land 
would support, but that there is land here which will sup- 
port some stock, I will also prove by facts. * * * 
While the army was here Japonski Island was used as a 
stock ranch. There has been kept on it as many as sixty 
head of cattle, over one hundred of sheep, and over three 
hundred of hogs ; all of which obtained their own food for 
a much greater portion of the year than they could have 
done in any state north of Alabama ; and there was no 
difficulty in getting good hay. Twelve miles north of here 
are the Katliansky and Nesquasarisky bays and plains, 
which, having been planted with_ timothy some years ago 
by a settler named Doyle, furnished to the troops an aver- 
age ofjbctyjtonsof g"ood hay,_cured during the heated spell 
ofTuly, whe n the temperatu re goes up into the nineties ; 
and this. .year those who cut a little for their own supply es- 
timate that there was at least one hundred tons. In the 
immediate vicinity of Sitka there are three thousand acres of 
arable land, much of which is now well grassed and covered 
with white clover. And on the summits of some of the 
foot-hills there are plateaus now covered with wild grasses, 
where innumerable deer obtain pasturage and where goats 
and mountain sheep would thrive." 

These references are to limited areas which have come 
within a circumscribed scope of observation. They illus- 
trate the coast region, just as arable places illustrate Switz- 
erland ; and Switzerland is a good country, if not strictly 
agricultural. With regard to the Yukon River country, 
Captain Wm. H. Dall, of the United States Coast Survey, 
says, in his report made to the Commissioner of Agriculture 
in 1867 : — "Among the more valuable grasses, of which 
some thirty species are known to exist in the Yukon terri- 
tory, is the well-known Kentucky blue grass, which grows 
luxuriantly as far north as Kotzebue Sound, and perhaps to 
Point Barrow. 

" The wood meadow-grass is abundant. The blue joint- 
grass [Calamagrostis canadensis) also reaches the latitude 
of Kotzebue Sound, and grows on the coast of Norton 
Sound with a truly surprising luxuriance, reaching in very 
favorable localities four or even five feet in height, and 
averaging at least three. Many other grasses enumerated 
in the list of useful plants grow abundantly, and con- 
tribute largely to the whole amount of herbage. Two 
species of £/ymus almost deceive the traveler with the 
aspect of grain-fields, maturing a perceptible kernel which 
the field-mice lay up in store. 



52 OUR NEW ALA SKA. 

" The grasses are woven into mats, dishes, articles of 
clothing for summer use, such as socks, mittens, and a sort 
of hats, by all the Indians, and more especially by the 
Esquimaux. 

" In winter the dry grasses, collected in the summer for 
the purpose, and neatly tied in bunches, are shaped to cor- 
respond with the foot, and placed between the foot and the 
seal-skin sole of the winter boots worn in that country. 
There they serve as a non-conductor, keeping the foot dry 
and warm, and protecting it from contusion. 

" Grain has never been sown on a large scale in the Yukon 
territory. Barley, I was informed, had once or twice been 
tried at Fort Yukon, in small patches, and the grain had 
matured, though the straw was very short. The experi- 
ments were never carried any further, however, the traders 
being obliged to devote all their energies to the collection 
of furs." 

Respecting the Aleutian islands, he states that " The.climate 
is better adapted for haying than that of the coast of 
Oregon. The cattle were remarkably fat, and the beef very 
tender and delicate ; rarely surpassed by any well-fed stock. 
Milk jwas abundant. The good and available arable land 
lies"~chiefiy near the coast, formed by the meeting and 
mingling of the detritus from mountain and valley with the 
sea sand, which formed a remarkably rich and genial soil, 
well suited for garden and root-crop culture. It occurs to 
us that many choice sunny hillsides here would produce 
good crops under the thrifty hand of enterprise. They are 
already cleared for the plow. Where grain-like grasses 
grow and mature well, it seems fair to infer that oats and 
barley would thrive, provided they were fall-sown, like the 
native grasses. This is abundantly verified by reference to 
the collections. Several of these grasses had already 
(September) matured and cast their seed before we arrived, 
showing sufficient length of season. Indeed no grain will 
yield more than half a crop of poor quality (on the Pacific 
slope), when spring-sown, whether north or south. 

" The Russians affirm, with confirmation by later visitors, 
that potatoes are cultivated in almost every Aleutian village ; 
and Veniaminof states that at the village in Isanotsky 
Strait they have raised them and preserved the seed for 
planting since the begining of this century. 

" Wild pease grow in great luxuriance near Unalaska Bay, 
and as far north as latitude sixty-four degrees." 

There is no trouble about wintering cattle and sheep 
in Alaska. Old traders have declared to me that the 



ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED. 53 

musk-ox exists in considerable numbers in the northern 
part of the territory, especially near the British boundary 
line, on the other side of which, in the vicinity of 
the Mackenzie River, Northwest Territory, they are quite 
numerous ; and although some naturalists strenuously in- 
sist that it does not, and never did, exist in Alaska, there 
seems no reason why the Rocky Mountain range should 
constitute an insuperable obstacle to their transit. There 
are several fine specimens of the musk-ox in the United 
States National Museum, all of which were obtained 
in the Mackenzie River country, but there are none 
from Alaska ; so that bodily proof is wanting. On 
the other hand we read in Lieutenant Schwatka's 
article printed in the Century Magazine in 1883, that 
the range of the musk-ox is from latitude 60 degrees 
to 79 degrees, and from the Rocky Mountain di- 
vide, westward, almost to the Behring Sea. The native 
mountain sheep and goats of Alaska weather through the 
inclement winters without sheds or cotes, or any shelter but 
the dense undergrowth which chokes every gully and ravine. 
Domestic utensils and ornaments are made by the natives 
from the horns of each, and the latter animals are in such 
abundance as to furnish wool for quite an extensive manu- 
facture of blankets and clothing. Wool-growing should be- 
c ome a n important industry in Alaska, as it is in Oregon ; 
and better, for the atmosphere there is not so damp. Last 
summer a single i' train of twenty cars loaded with 438,000 
pounds of wool was made up at Portland for Philadelphia, 
and this was only a fraction of the product of the State. So 
fine is the texture of the fleece of the Alaskan Mountain 
goat, that the meanest homespun Chilkoot blanket fetches 
twenty dollars. There is not the shadow of a doubt that 
these animals can be easily domesticated, and the wool 
product made immensely profitable. The very fact of their 
preference of location by the wild goats and sheep show 
that there is no portion of America more favorable for ovi- 
culture than the ridges of Alaska, while the numerous herds 
of cariboo, moose, and deer, away up on the plateau of the 
Yukon, testify with equal favor of the moors and moss- 
barrens of the interior. What subsists one class of animals 
should subsist its kin. 

In addition to the farming and herding, large supple- 
mentary revenues should.be derived from the dairy, the 
poultry-yard and hog-pen. Indeed, butter, eggs, beef, pork 
ancTpoultry should be always staples. A pork-packing es- 
tablishment might become an indispensable institution of 



54 OUR NEW ALA SKA. 

the coast, if one could only guarantee the flavor — as the 
hogs feed greedily on the sea-castings, growing enormously 
fat. Silk culture might be prosecuted, and also the culture 
of sugar beets. Alaska ought to manufacture her own 
sugar. A current newspaper paragraph states that the fac- 
tory at Alvarado, California, made 1250 tons of refined 
beet sugar last season. The Alvarado factory has been in 
operation six years, and its profits are computed at $104,- 
000 on an investment of $125,000. The growers get I4.50 
a ton for beets, and the yield is said to average twenty tons 
to the acre. The factory pays out about $90,000 a year for 
beets. 

Here are some Sitka market prices for the summer of 
1885 : Venison 5 and 10 cents per pound ; a six pound salmon 
10 cents ; grouse, per pair, 50 cents ; sugar 18 cents ; me- 
dium butter 75 cents the roll of less than two pounds ; 
eggs 50 cents per dozen ; a cabbage-head 25 cents ; new 
potatoes one dollar per bushel. Some goats are kept for 
milk. There is not only good land all along the coast, but 
plenty of it fit for cultivation of all the produce that there 
is likely to be a market for during many years to come. The 
present population of Southwestern Alaska, according to 
the report of Gov. Swineford, is, whites, 1,900 ; natives, 
7,000. For the whole Territory the most reliable estimate 
is 30,000. 

The timber forests of Alaska are a standing testimony to 
the value of the " Seward Purchase," which even the 
most obstreperous objectors could not deny. The visible 
wealth of Alaska lies in her forests. Alaska is the great 
timber reserve of the continent. Trees of such size and 
commercial value exist nowhere else on the globe in such 
numbers and extensive areas of growth. There is a supply 
here of five thousand seven hundred million feet at a low 
estimate, a very large part of which is at once accessible 
for shipment, as saw-mills and vessels can lie right along- 
side the timber at tide-water, all the way up the coast as 
far as it extends. Saw-mills at two or more prominent 
points on the coast ought to pay well, for lumber is very high. 
If prices were less, the Indians alone would purchase large 
quantities. The first sawmill ever set up in South America 
was by a citizen of the Unitrd States, who went to Ancud, 
Chili, in 1828, and it laid the foundation of his great wealth, 
accumulated there. The example might be followed here. 
We are approaching a time when the resources of the 
Union will be overtaxed, and timber will be scarce ; but 
when all the states are drained of their product, there will 



ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED. 55 

remain in Alaska a virgin reserve -of more than 300,000,000 
acres of the noblest timber in the world — a source of wealth 
upon which the people may draw for generations to come. 
All the islands are clothed with it ; the mountains of the 
adjacent main-land are covered with it ; great areas of the 
interior plateau, which reaches to the verge of the Arctic 
sea, are untracked wildernesses of spruce. Only when peo- 
ple who are now strangers to the land and listeners to the 
story come to see the magnitude of these forests, and the 
stupendous individuality of their giant trees, will they be 
able to realize the truth of what is told them. The lumber- 
men of the old states, whose lives have been passed in 
logging camps, would stand appalled at the majesty of the 
Douglas pines, which tower heavenward, and whose diame- 
ter is nine feet at the base; or the famous red cedars, out 
of which the Indians make their dug-out canoes, some of 
them sixty feet in length with eight feet beam ! 

Alongside of some logs which one finds prone, the choicest 
cull of the Wisconsin and Minnesota drives, would look like 
fence posts. Beside standing trees, the tallest rampikes of 
the Maine forests resemble saplings. Here the alders grow 
to a diameter of sixteen inches, and an ordinary maple leaf 
has thirteen inches span. Rankness characterizes all the 
growth. But the trees are not all gigantic, or the forests 
all unscathed. The bulk of the forest trees are of ordinary 
height, say seventy feet or so, and the giants are distributed 
throughout at neighborly intervals, occupying the low- 
lands between the shoulders of the mountains; but many 
of the angular hill-sides along the coast fairly bristle with 
the skeletons of dead spruces, which have died from dearth 
of nourishment among the rocks; the survivors meanwhile 
drawing life from their decaying remains. As in all known 
forests frequented by man, fires have here run through vast 
areas of the wilderness, starting from carelessness of hunt- 
ers and trappers, causing conflagrations whose smoke 
obscures the sun for months together. It is sad to contem- 
plate the great destruction ; yet some of the forests of Alaska 
are over-populous. Time was, I ween, when the only 
smokes seen in the distant view were the signals of the 
tribes who wished to communicate with each other ; some 
for the purpose of barter, some to intimate the presence of 
intruders ; some to indicate the direction to be taken, or a 
point of rendezvous. Sometimes the signal was a big 
smoke, at others only a thin spiral ; again there were two or 
three adjacent, some large, others small, with many varia- 
tions adapted to the information to be conveyed. These 



5 6 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

Indian signals were almost as perfect as the crude symbols 
of our army at the beginning of the war, before they were 
formulated into a fixed code. 

Commercially considered, the trees of Alaska rank as fol- 
lows : Yellow cedar, spruce, hemlock, alder and a species 
of fir or black pine. The Douglas pine, which is so abund- 
ant in British Columbia and possesses the chief commer- 
cial value there, is replaced in great part in Southern 
Alaska "by the white cedar, a splendid finishing wood, out 
of which the Indians carve their totem poles or heraldic 
columns. The red cedar grows in special abundance on 
the lower coasts, and extends inland to the Rocky Moun- 
tains. It is in great demand because of its durability. Of 
it the Indians make their canoes, roofing their houses with 
the bark and weaving the fiber into blankets. The cypress 
or yellow cedar is found in southern Alaska, It is suscepti- 
ble of taking a very fine polish, and considered valuable for 
boat-building and finishing purposes. It sells for $80 per 
thousand in San Francisco. It possesses a delightful odor, 
which like camphor wood it retains for a long time ; and, 
manufactured into boxes and chests, is very valuable for 
packing furs and other goods, as it is said to be a moth 
preventive. It is also extremely tough, and proof against 
the teredo sea-worm, and for this reason is in demand for 
piling and all submarine purposes. Samuel's West Shore 
Magazine supplies the following list of the principal trees of 
British Columbia, nearly all of which I believe are common 
to some portion of Alaska, but not all of equal perfection in 
the higher latitude : — 

" Juniper, or pencil cedar, found on the east coast of 
Vancouver Island, and on the shores of lakes in the inte- 
rior. The Weymouth, or white pine, {Pinus strobus) found 
on the Lower Fraser, where it attains great size and beauty. 
The balsam pine attains a vigorous growth, but is of little 
value as timber. Yellow pine, {Pinus ponderosa) flourishes 
in the interior. The wood is close-grained and durable, 
though very heavy. Scotch fir, {Pinus Bankskiand) is 
found in the interior ; also on Vancouver Island, though of 
a smaller growth. Throughout the lower coast the hem- 
lock, {Abies sitkensis) grows to large proportions, its bark 
being exceedingly valuable for tanning purposes. The 
western larch, {Larix occidentalis) grows to immense size in 
the bottoms along the international line. The yew, {Taxus 
brevi-folia) is found on the coast and as far up the Fraser 
as Yale. It does not attain the size of English yew. The 
natives utilize it for bows. Oak, {Q Garryana) grows 



ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED. 57 

abundantly on Vancouver Islands. It is tough and service- 
able. Alder grows along the streams of the coast, and 
attains great size. It is useful for furniture. Maple is 
abundant on the islands and coast up to latitude 55 degrees. 
The wood is very useful for cabinet making. Vine maple, 
a very strong white wood, is confined to the coast. Crab- 
apple grows along the coast. Dogwood is found on Van- 
couver Island and opposite coast. The aspen poplar is 
found throughout the interior. Another variety of poplar 
abounds along the water courses near the coast, and is the 
kind so much in demand on Puget Sound for barrel staves. 
Two other kinds of poplar— all known as "cottonwood," — as 
well as the mountain ash, are found in the interior valleys." 

The white spruce is the most widely distributed of Alaska 
trees, covering the country inland to the Rocky Mountains 
and up to the very shores of the Arctic Ocean on the north. 
The white birch is also abundant in the interior, and is used 
for canoes by some tribes. The cottonwood is found on 
the upper Yukon, where it is used for navigating its rough 
waters. Manifestly, there is in Alaska a great variety of 
merchantable woods which are available for new uses, and 
new woods which may be substituted for others nearly used 
up commercially. I am fully convinced of the great value 
of what is there unrecognised and unappreciated, but which 
we can not afford to ignore or overlook any longer. 

Some of the mosses of Alaska are of special economic 
value. They have long been utilized by the natives in 
various ways. Within twenty years the tree-mosses of 
Florida, Texas, and Louisiana have become important 
articles of commerce, chiefly as substitutes for curled horse 
hair in the manufacture of mattresses, cushions, etc., and 
the mosses of Alaska are equally desirable and available 
for like purposes. The supply is practically inexhaustible, 
and when it is contiguous to the coast it may be gathered 
without great labor. 

The impenetrable jungle of the Alaskan forest, with its 
windfalls of timber and profusion of wild fruit and succu- 
lent mosses, constitutes an incomparable nursery and pro- 
tection for its fauna, while the open ridges above the timber 
line are no less secure from man's intrusion by the natural 
obstacles interposed. Assuredly, there is no place on the 
continent where wild animals enjoy such perfect immunity 
from harm. It remains by its natural gifts the only great 
game and fur preserve left in the western world, and stands 
ready and wide open for the operations of intrepid hunters 
and trappers at the very time when other sources of supply 



53 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

have been drained, and denizens of cold countries are look- 
ing about them for substitutes for buffalo robes and the 
more costly furs which have now at last become priceless or 
extinct. American furs are becoming scarcer every year as 
civilization pushes into the wilds. Oregon, which within 
the memory of men not old, was one of the finest of hunting 
grounds, has practically ceased to yield any thing of the 
kind. Washington Territory is only productive in its wilder 
portions, and the same may be said of British Columbia. 
Alaska, however, remains almost intact, and not only the 
lucrative seal isles of Prybilov, but all the fastnesses of the 
coast range, the "barren grounds " of the great plateau, and 
the banks of the great rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean, 
still make it worth the absorbing attention of the fur trader, 
and the trapper. The stock of good merchantable fur is 
neither abundant nor cheap in Alaska ; but squirrel robes 
containing six or seven dozen skins neatly sewed together 
may often be bought cheap at the Indian " ranches." They 
make excellent cloak and coat linings. A red fox skin 
costs two dollars ; mountain goat fifty cents; black bear 
from ten to twenty-five dollars unmounted. Hair and fur 
seals range in price, undressed from three to ten dollars ; 
sea otter from ninety to two-hundred dollars — the most 
expensive of all American fur and the most desirable. 
Land otter is very pretty, and at one of the Sitka stores a 
shoulder cape and muff made up in San Francisco was offered 
at twenty-five dollars. The Russian occupation, which was 
founded on the fur trade and enriched itself for a century 
on its profits, withdrew from the field before the lead was 
half worked out, nay, scarcely opened ! The Hudson Bay 
Company was long ago attracted to the country by its 
inducements, and attempted to secure a foothold in it by 
establishing trading posts on the upper Yukon as far back 
as 1850, crossing the Rocky mountain divide from the head 
waters of the Mackenzie; but they were soon driven out by 
the Chilkoot Indians, the most energetic and business-like 
of the coast tribes, who had been for generations the self- 
constituted middle-men between the seaboard and the in- 
terior ; and the interior of Alaska has since remained an 
unoccupied field for the pursuit of an industry, which for a 
century enriched a masterful corporation and made it almost 
a sovereign power. If the brave spirits who started the 
Northwest Fur Company of years ago, and whose survivors 
are now few and hoary, could renew their youth and energy, 
they would ask no better opportunity for business than 
the one now so opportunely presented, with transportation 



ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED. 59 

made easy and bases of supplies convenient, the natives not 
only friendly but earnestly disposed, the cost of outfit cheap, 
and a market more remunerative than was ever offered 
before. It is true that an enterprising company — now- 
known as the Northwest Fur Company — has within a com- 
paratively short time, established trading posts at Chilkat, 
Sitka, Wrangell, and other points along the coast ; its 
methods are business-like and progressive, and its policy 
liberal ; but it will take an army of traders to fully occupy 
the field ; and so I repeat, it practically remains unoccu- 
pied. The successes of the Hudson Bay Company, through 
the protracted period of its sovereignty, are an earnest of 
the resources which are held in reserve in the Alaskan fur 
lands ; and inasmuch as its earnings reached millions an- 
nually, who dare say that the " Seward Purchase " is not 
as good as gold ? How long before our government will 
awake to realize the truth? 

With regard to the mineral resources of Alaska whose 
richness is rapidly coming to view with their development, 
I have chosen to devote a separate chapter. I will merely 
pause to mention that the total out-put of Alaska mines for 
the year 1885, is officially placed at $25 1,000. This amount 
is 3/^ per-cent on the purchase price of the territory. 

The most lucrative and best known industry of Alaska, is 
the seal " fishery," so called, though the animals are usually 
driven upon the land and knocked on the head with clubs. 
For the exclusive privilege of catching seals, not to exceed 
100,000 in number per annum, the Alaska Company of San 
Francisco, pays to the goverment the stipulated price of 
$317,000, every year. When the lease expires in 1890, it 
will have paid into the United States Treasury $6,340,000, a 
sum. equal to six-sevenths of the original purchase money. 

With regard to the possibilities of the Alaska Commercial 
fisheries, they may be regarded as simply illimitable. Fish are 
so abundant everywhere, that a dime will at any time procure 
from a native all the fish that ten men can eat. Halibut 
banks, cod-fish banks, and rock-cod bottoms, occur at inter- 
vals all along the coast. Salmon jam the rivers and tidal 
estuaries so that they can not move, in masses many yards 
wide and as deep as the normal rise of the tide (18 feet) 
from the surface to the bottom. In their spawning season 
candle-fish, or caplin — beautiful fish some seven inches 
long, like smelts — line the beaches at each flood-tide in 
windrows a yard wide and several inches deep, all 
alive and kicking, each incoming wave stranding a host 
of them. Herring swarm in all the estuaries and channels. 



60 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

All the inlets abound in fish of a hundred known and 
unknown kinds, good for food and good for oil and 
fertilizers. Whales and blackfish are plentiful off the coast 
and in the estuaries. There is wealth here for all who 
will spread their nets or cast the hook. Devastating 
storms and periodical dearth of fish do not make the fishing 
business too hazardous to undertake. Starvation never 
threatens. Our Cape Anners and Gloucester fishermen who 
breast the hardships of the Atlantic, will here find a more 
congenial climate ; spring opening with fulsome benefi- 
cence in early March ; fish swarming into every estuary 
and congregating on every outlying bank in ample season 
for Lenten market ; herring, cod and halibut enough to sat- 
isfy an eternity of Fridays. There labor stands already 
provided — men, native Indians accustomed for many gener- 
ations to the perils, intricacies and abounding munificence 
of the sea coast ; men, intelligent and industrious, waiting 
with open arms to welcome any enterprise which will give 
them congenial and profitable employment ; men of dusky 
hue, and strong sinews to breast the waves and haul the 
seine and heave the ponderous halibut and rock cod from 
their sequestered depths, who have already, of their own 
motion and energy, established canneries and oil factories 
along their sea-girt home ! Here on this boundless Pacific 
coast, where Yankee and Kanuck have each a thousand 
miles of scope, no questions of jurisdiction or marine pre- 
rogatives need arise ; whispers of awards and claims will 
be lost in the sounding surf ; dissensions and jealousy will 
be drowned in the overwhelming flood of fortune ; and no 
one will have to wait on the flow of tide. All the vessels 
of the coast-guard will be impressed for holiday jaunts 
among the clustering islands, and moods and tenses of men 
and tempests will remain symbolically " pacific." Should 
the attachments of home be too strong for the sturdy New 
Englanders to cut their latch-strings loose altogether and 
deter them from migrating for permanent establishment on 
new cruising grounds, the annihilation of time and distance 
by modern facilities of transcontinental transportation will 
make each trip and periodical sojourn little more than an 
annual holiday excursion. Compared with the precarious 
ventures of their progenitors who flocked to the North 
Atlantic fishing grounds before the early days of colonial 
settlement, their new departure would be a bagatelle — a 
mere reflection of personal hazard and commercial risk. 

Out in Alaska every thing which is required for this stu- 
pendous industry grows spontaneously — an abundance of 



£ CONOMICA LLY CONSIDERED. 6 1 

bait without cost ; all materials for building and cooperage; 
ice for packing, salt for curing, if it can be evaporated 
profitably, and twine for nets and seines, which is supplied 
by the gigantic kelp, a hundred feet in length, whose fiber is 
too tough to break. At no distant day ice from her glaciers 
will be harvested for consumption in lower latitudes, just as 
it is now gathered in San Rafael Bay, in South America, for 
refrigerating uses in Chili and equatorial towns. Some 
enterprising company will establish a set of piers or breakers 
in the bays where the glacier streams debouch, with flumes 
and machinery for squaring the ice for stowage in cargo ; and 
among the ice, packed in galvanized iron cases inclosed by 
wooden crates, fresh fish will be dispatched on ten-knot 
steamers to lower ports, and thence perchance to eastern 
cities where Pacific salmon have long been the precursors of 
the coming traffic. Thus a combined industry may secure 
a two-fold return from the capital employed. The rapid 
drift of time will see all these things accomplished, for men 
will not be content to grub when they can possess bonanzas 
for the gathering. Glut of labor will return no more " like 
a dog to its vomit," nauseating the whole industrial system ; 
but the surcharge will flow into the open channels of our 
new possession, and, with the relief that must follow, the 
present pressure will measurably cease to aggravate dis- 
tress. Capital will prefer to invest where it is least liable to 
disturbance, and in Alaska the field is broad, the laborers few, 
and the branches of industry new and almost untried. But, 
while we are listless, the citizens of British Columbia seem 
fully awake to the opportunities which lie before them, and 
appreciate the importance of their undeveloped resources, 
so very like our own in kind and quantity. Already they 
have steamers running to all essential points up the rivers' 
and along the coast to the international boundary line. 
They have established numerous industries, thrown open 
public lands to settlement, civilized the Indians and insti- 
tuted schools for them and sumptuary laws. We have no 
need to try a single economic or political experiment. All 
this they have done for us, and we have only to profit by 
the outcome. Even the Indian problem, so difficult in the 
east, has been most satisfactorily demonstrated, as may be 
attested by their well-regulated and self-governed native 
communities, and by the public commercial records which 
show that the majority of fishermen, especially in the north- 
ern canneries, are Indians,* who are expert and reliable 

* Chiefly the Hydahs and Shimpsheans. ~ * 



62 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

and are preferred to any other kind of labor. On the 
steamers they are employed almost exclusively for rousta- 
bouts, and are paid higher wages than white men, because 
they can do more work and are more reliable and steady. 

What a blessed word of encouragement this is to our 
home philanthropists ! In this very department of fish- 
eries, the authorities have taken advanced steps to attract 
that class of immigrants which, if the movement should 
become popular, must transfer a large share of the fishing 
interests of the Maritime Provinces to the Pacific coast. 
The laws of British Columbia are very liberal to those 
engaging in the fisheries, for they accord to all persons the 
right to use any vacant public property for the purpose of 
landing and curing fish. The Dominion Government, too, 
has promised valuable assistance to immigrants, and it is 
stated that a very considerable number of Lower Province 
fishermen will this year avail themselves of the inducements 
offered. If our neighbors now forestall us, the blame will 
be our own, for sagacious men of far-reaching perspicujty 
have been constantly pointing out our golden opportunities 
and instructing us how to improve them. In the matter of 
public lands, the Canadian law provides that any surveyed 
or unsurveyed crown lands not already occupied or 
recorded, may be entered, either as a pre-emption or home- 
stead, by any head of a family, widow, or single man over 
eighteen years of age, who is a British subject, or an alien 
who has declared his intention to become such. An alien 
can transact business and hold real estate. The price of 
land is $1.00 per acre. 

Side by side with this progressive policy, and as between two 
countries lying side by side and equally endowed by nature, 
we find that in Alaska there is no way provided by which a 
home may be procured. The territory having been ceded 
to us by treaty is not subject to pre-emption, and Congress 
has been most dilatory in providing means to remove the 
disability, or in enacting remedial laws. There has been an 
unwarrantable neglect of Alaska ever since its purchase 
in 1867, and the only wonder is that there has been any 
development at all. Not until the autumn of 1884 — seven- 
teen years after its purchase — was it represented by a Terri- 
torial governor ; and up to date of the present incumbency, 
which took place in September, 1885, no fruitful or serious 
endeavor was known to have been made by the territorial 
administration to use the large discretionary powers con- 
ferred on it for the advancement of the people, or the im- 
provement of the country's natural capabilities. To the 



ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED. 63 

enterprise of large private companies is due the prosecu- 
tion of the seal fisheries, and the gold mines, to which of 
late considerable attention has been directed. For the appli- 
cation of individual capital and labor there is as yet but small 
encouragement. Nevertheless, two negro men of nerve 
(praise to the race !) under stress of local pressure, have 
instituted a very creditable barber shop at Juneau. 

Bancroft's " History of Alaska " has summarized the 
general situation in a nutshell : " A country where there is 
no commerce, where there are few industries, where there 
are no schools except those supported by charity, where no 
title can as yet be gained to land, where there are no repre- 
sentative institutions and no settled administration, does 
not hold out any very strong inducements to emigrants. 
Although in name a civil and judicial district, Alaska is 
still, in practice, at this time — almost nineteen years after 
its cession — little more than a customs district." 

However, within the past twelve months, a good deal has 
been accomplished toward providing for the educational in- 
terests of the Territory, and under an act, or acts, of Con- 
gress which appropriated some forty thousand dollars for 
the purpose, common schools have been established at 
seven or eight points, as well as an industrial school at 
Sitka ; other schools have been authorized to be established 
at as many more points.* The present governor, too, upon 
taking possession of the not too stable seat of government 
last fall, at once undertook the establishment of a weekly 
paper there, through whose columns have been periodically 
disseminated truthful statements respecting the country and 
its needs and prospects, whereby the public mind is being 
prepared for the wholesome change which is anticipated in 
the not distant future. In his first official message to Con- 
gress he earnestly pressed upon their attention the impor- 
tance of immediately instituting an efficient police system 
and water patrol, of opening trails or roads from the coast 
to the headwaters of the Yukon River, of fixing the boun- 
dary lines beyond dispute, and increasing the mail facilities. 
He also recommended high license as the best device for 
correcting and checking the evils of a defiant and unwar- 
rantable liquor traffic. And he sent a commissioner in the 
winter to New Orleans, with native exhibits for the Exposi- 
tion, the collection embracing, according to the catalogue, 
specimens of gold-bearing quartz, coal, iron, and mica ; 
logs of spruce, yellow cedar, pine, alder, and fir, together 

* The Sitka public school has fifty pupils, boys and girls. 



64 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

with polished boards and cubes of the same woods ; salmon, 
cod, rock cod, sea trout, sea bass, arctic trout, etc., pre- 
served in alcohol ; wheat, oats, timothy, clover, red-top, 
blue-joint ; potatoes, turnips, cabbages, cauliflowers, etc., 
together with wild fruits and berries in hermetically-sealed 
glass jars, articles showing the handicraft of the native 
Alaskans, and interesting curios. Subsequently, in May 
just past, he appeared in person before the Territorial Com- 
mittee of Congress, at Washington, to urge all that he had 
previously suggested and prayed for. The governor is 
obviously a live man, and enthusiastic, and well qualified to 
promote and guard the interests of his official charge. His 
principal appeal is for the privilege of local legislation ; and 
it ought to be a sufficient assurance and encouragement to 
us to know from our Canadian neighbors that " under wise 
local legislation the Province of British Columbia has pros- 
pered greatly, despite the neglect which it [also] long suf- 
fered at the hands of the home government, which could 
neither appreciate the value nor understand the needs of 
that far-distant dependency." So admitted the Earl Duf- 
ferin. And as our territorial neighbor has done, so may our 
new possession. 

The southwestern portion of Alaska, in particular, is a 
region so desirable that efforts have been repeatedly made 
within the past half century by the British or Canadian gov- 
ernments to acquire it by absorption or purchase. During 
the Crimean war schemes were afoot to wrest it from Rus- 
sia, and as late as 1878, in the Dominion Parliament, while 
the question of the boundary between Alaska and British 
Columbia was under consideration at Ottawa, the Hon. Mr. 
Bunster said : " Honorable gentlemen might laugh, but 
looking at the matter from a national point of view, he fully 
meant what he said from his knowledge of the country, that 
the Territory of Alaska possessed a more genial climate 
than Ottawa, notwithstanding its latitude, while its natural 
resources and capabilities were more valuable than people 
had any idea of. When honorable members of this house 
sneered at Alaska, he had a right to speak from his own 
personal knowledge and tell them they were mistaken ; 
and the day was not far distant when, from the geograph- 
ical position of this country, they would see the force of his 
remarks on this subject. The lease of Alaska was more 
than enough to pay one million dollars annually. It was the 
best investment the United States had ever made." 

At present there are scarcely a score of people who^aig 
aware what a revenue it brings, and what far greater income 



ECONOMICALL Y CONSIDERED. 65 

is likely to accrue, and those who read or listen to the gov- 
ernor's testimony smile with incredulity ! But it will hardly 
take " a generation," as Secretary Seward believed it might, 
for the people to learn the truth. Lots of excursionists and 
" che-chah-cos' (new comers intending to settle) will visit 
there this year.. Every steamer's complement will be filled, 
from June to September.* Among the most observing and 
sagacious are to be Chief Justice Waite, of the U. S. Supreme 
Court, and Associate Justice Gray, and these we may be 
sure will judge correctly and report honestly. Whatever 
prejudiced or incompetent persons may say to the contrary, 
Caleb and Joshua will be believed. 

* The May steamer to Sitka took three hundred prospectors to Sitka 
and Chilkoot. 




TOTEM-POLE (HAIDAH) 



AN INTERIOR VIEW. 



Alaska is an ultima thule only to those who live far from 
it. This is no more paradoxical than the fact that prox- 
imity always makes objects seem near. Alaska is a friendly 
and familiar neighbor to all the dwellers of the North 
Pacific, and the people of Port Townsend and Victoria 
think no more of the bi-monthly run to the Alaskan boun- 
dary than New Yorkers do of a trip to Boston. The depar- 
ture of the bi-monthly mail for Sitka attracts less attention 
than the sailing of a Cunarder for Great Britain. Van- 
couver passed this way and northward a full century ago. 
Up to 1793 the Spaniards disputed with the English for the 
possession of the coast. The shores of British Columbia 
have been settled for half a century at least ; fur-traders 
and miners have long kept it in a state of constant activity. 
So also Alaska is not a new discovery ; neither is its inte- 
rior a terra incognita. It has been known to the Russians 
throughout its length and breadth for nearly a century, and 
to the Hudson Bay Company for forty years or more. Voy- 
agers, trappers and hunters have traversed it in every direc- 
tion, but geographical explorers have known but little about 
it. There are Indians who have grown gray in the business 
of freighting goods across the mountains into the interior, 
over the very trails selected by the government parties who 
have been exploring the Yukon within the past three years. 
As much as eight tons of merchandise have been packed 
over tne Chilcat trail alone in a single season, and there 
were some eighty men in the brigade. There are lots of 
old residents, American-born, who are competent to speak 
of the resources of the entire country from personal 
acquaintance with it. There is Alex. Choquette, of Wran- 
gell, a French Canadian trader, who has dwelt in Alaska for 
twenty-eight years, and speaks all current languages, and 
the dialects of all the tribes, having mingled constantly with 
them. King Lear, a native of Ohio, also living at Wran- 
gell, has been a sojourner in the territory for nearly as long, 
and so has Capt. George, formerly of Massachusetts, who 
married a sister of the Russian priest at Sitka, and now 






AN INTERIOR VIEW, 67 

serves as coast pilot for the regular steamers ; and so has 
Dick. Willoughby, of Juneau, once of Virginia and now 
famous as a proprietor and mining expert. He has tramped 
the interior all through for hundreds of miles back, and 
knows every quarry, ledge, and stringer of quartz from the 
coast to the " Stewart." Tom Haley, of Sitka, an old sol- 
dier, has been prospecting since 1872, and has located a 
dozen gold " finds " during the interval, to which I shall 
refer at length. From such hardy men as these, weather- 
stained and self-informed, some of them settlers before the 
civil war, authentic and comprehensive information could be 
obtained at trifling expense in lieu of fitting out costly gov- 
ernment expeditions, whose best use is to verify current 
reports and establish facts upon official data. 

The United States Fishery Commission has of late years 
stimulated investigation of marine objects by enlisting the 
co-operation of sailors and fishermen at large, with the result 
that not less than 60,000 specimens have been collected by 
them, and thirty new varieties added to the list of North 
American marine fauna. Their interest and activity has 
been stimulated by honorable mention and an occasional 
intrinsic token of merit. By like methods, equally simple 
and inexpensive, the government might enlist the aid of all 
miners, traders, voyageurs and Indians penetrating to the 
interior of Alaska. It should have an agent at all outfitting 
points to give instructions, present inducements and furnish 
maps and diaries for entering each day's observations— mete- 
orological phenomena, the contour of the land, the quality 
of soil, the streams and their courses, and all plants, trees, 
animals, birds, fish, rocks and minerals should be scrupu- 
lously noted and the dates given. The Northwest Trading 
Company, who are the successors of the Russians, but whose 
views and policy are liberal and progressive, have ware- 
houses at all principal points, which would constitute effi- 
cient bases of future operations under some such method 
as has been outlined. The establishment should be in charge 
of some officer of the signal service to be stationed at Sitka, 
who would also furnish tabulated statements of daily mete- 
orological reports. Such weather statistics would be invalu- 
able in determining the capabilities of the country whatever 
they are, and define the precise limit and duration of the 
seasons. 

However, the value of authorized expeditions should in 
nowise be belittled. The public will build with confidence 
upon official guaranty. Lieutenant Schwatka's exploration 
of the Great Yukon Valley from its headwaters to its 



68 OUR NEW ALA SKA . 

mouth, an intrepid voyage with no visible base of sup- 
plies or succor in the last emergencies ; the arduous jour- 
ney of Lieutenant Henry T. Allen, across the " Alaskan 
Range," in the 145th Meridian, from the headwaters of Cop- 
per river to the sources of the Tenana, a great tributary of 
the Yukon, 500 miles in length ; the winter residence and 
researches of Lieutenant G. M. Stoney, in the Northern dis- 
trict of Alaska, along the rivers which empty into the 
Arctic Ocean ; and the indefatigable investigations of 
the Hon. James G. Swan, whose remarkable collections 
enrich the United States National Museum ; all these, cov- 
ering such an extensive area, attest the heroism of modern 
science and the economic benefit therefrom derived, im- 
mediate and deferred. The published results of these in- 
vestigations have as yet appeared only in part ; the total 
will give final proof of their collective value. Newspaper 
writers who visit Alaska fall into the habit of repeating 
what some careless scribblers have placed on record, so that 
erroneous opinions hastily formed upon insufficient data 
soon become a popular impression. Transient visitors to 
the coast, who observe the snow peaks and the glaciers, 
delight to fancy themselves in regions hyperborean, and in- 
vest them with a romance of the most frigid character ; 
hence misapprehension. Says one writer : " Flood the 
canons, gorges and plains of Colorado and you have Alaska." 
This might satisfy a view of the Archipelago from the apex 
of Mt. Edgecumb, but it will hardly apply to the great 
Yukon plateau, which is as broad as the Dakota plains from 
the Mississippi River to the Black Hills. 

It is in no respect remarkable that knowledge of the in- 
terior has never come to the exterior light until now. It 
was not for a long time in the interest of the Russian Fur 
Company, until necessity subsequently modified their policy, 
to encourage prospectors and miners, nor immigration and 
settlement, because the Russian government reserved the 
right to take away from it the control of any land in which 
mineral deposits were found. Wherefore maps and facts 
were kept secluded from vulgar curiosity, specimens of ore 
were kept locked up in iron chests tighter than they had 
ever been in the rock-ribbed pockets of the earth. At the 
same time the Chilcat and Chilkoot Indians, who maintained 
a monopoly of trade between the coast and that part of the 
interior drained by the upper Yukon, were not only jealous of 
white intrusion, but protested to Captain Beardslee, of the 
United States navy, that " the white men demoralized the 
Indians by selling or giving them liquor and debauching 



AN INTERIOR VIEW. 69 

their women." They naturally discouraged all investiga- 
tion and took pains to represent the interior as " kultus " 
— worthless, sterile and unprofitable. They were not only 
reticent, but evasive, and when closely questioned were very 
clever always in devising a substitute for the truth. And all 
this time the YukonRiver, which is the great water-way and 
thoroughfare of the interior, traversing its entire breadth, 
was lined with Russian trading posts and native villages as 
far up as the Tenana River, a thousand miles or more from 
its mouth ! There was a British trading post as far up as 
Stewart River, five hundred miles higher, in the year 185 1, 
notwithstanding a current newspaper paragraph declares 
that an Indian tribe has been found there recently who never 
before saw or heard of white people ; and miners had 
pioneered the way in search of gold for a considerable dis- 
tance down that portion of the river which lies still higher 
up and nearer its source. 

Following Lieutenant Schwatkain his voyage over this last 
mentioned section of the Yukon, which comprises a stretch of 
500 miles, and referring to his record, we find one log-house 
located in the lake country which feeds the mighty stream, 
and from whence a trail only thirty-five miles long leads 
over the intervening coast range to the sea. Thence to Fort 
Selkirk, which marks the terminus of the first fluvial di- 
vision, two native villages were found, one at Nordenskjold, 
and the other at Kittahgon. In the next interval from Fort 
Selkirk to Fort Yukon, five hundred miles more, he enume- 
rates the following settlements : — 

1. A populous Ayan village, situated a little below Sel- 
kirk, whose people were conspicuous for their " Hebrew 
cast of countenance," and were " respectably neat and clean 
compared with Indians in general." They use birch bark 
canoes, and in summer occupy brush houses constructed 
with a ridge pole — in winter moose-skin tepees or lodges. 
They cure large quantities of salmon which have run up 
the river to spawn. 

2. On the opposite bank of the river another village 
called Kowsk-hou. 

3. At the mouth of Stewart River the ruins of an old 
Hudson Bay Company's post. 

4. An Indian camp of a tribe called Tahk-ong. 

5. Old Fort Reliance, abandoned. 

6. The Indian village of Nuclaco. These people had 
many guns. 

6. An Indian village of six log-houses with gable ends, 
called Klot-ol-kin, or " Johnny's Village." These people 



7 o OUR NE W ALASKA, 

used canoes of birch bark and cured their salmon on scaf- 
folds of spruce poles. 

8. Charley's Village, the counterpart of Johnny's, with 
the same number of houses. 

9. Fort Yukon ; a collection of tolerably well built houses, 
with stockade and block-houses. " For two hundred miles 
above and two hundred miles below Fort Yukon," Lieutenant 
Schwatka says, " the river flows through a region so flat that 
it seems like the floor of an empty lake. This area is 
densely timbered with spruce." The pale blue outline of 
the Romantzoff mountains are seen in the dim distance, far 
to the northward. The outlying spurs of the Alaskan range 
are seen to the south. The lower Yukon, a thousand miles 
in length, extends from this point to its delta in Bering 
Straits ; its banks all occupied by people. 

10. An Indian village, a short distance below Fort 
Yukon. 

11. An Indian burial-ground indicating the vicinity of a 
village. 

12. Indian village above the " Lower Ramparts." This 
part of the river was picturesque and not unlike the Hudson 
at West Point. 

13. Old town above Lower Ramparts. 

14. Another town below Lower Ramparts. 

15. Trading post of Nuklakayet, eighteen miles below 
Tenana River. A ten-ton schooner was found here. 

16. From this point down enumeration becomes tiresome. 
There is a continuous succession of Indian villages, and 
small trading stations all the way, day after day, with 
chaloupes and fishing craft. Fish weirs are spread all over 
the river, which has become very wide, and shallow near the 
shores. A steam tug plies between places. 

17. Town of Kaltag, near the ancient mouth of the 
Yukon, " the south bank being a simple flat plateau, though 
the north bank is high and even mountainous for a distance 
of more than four hundred miles further on." 

18. The picturesque trading post of Anvic. 

Just beyond Anvic, the last Indian village is passed, and 
about forty miles below it the Esquimaux Villages begin, of 
which there are many. Yet further down is a Russian Mis- 
sion with a Greek church ; still lower the town of Andre- 
avsky, near the head of the delta of the Yukon. 

Koatlik lies at the river's mouth. 

Two days' journey by steamer along the coast, north- 
east, is the picturesque seaport of St. Michael. 

To sum up, the whole country covered by Schwatka's 



AN INTERIOR VIEW. 71 

interesting journey, and especially the lower river, is far 
more populous than most persons had any idea of. The 
estimate of the interior population is 2,000 all told, of which 
the Ayans, the Tahk-heesh, the Tahk-ongs, and the Tenanas 
are the principal Indian tribes, and chief fur collectors of 
the unsurveyed wilderness. These constitute the nucleus 
of a commercial strength and a potent factor of production 
which should not be disregarded by political economists. 
They do not require civilizing at an inordinate cost to the 
public treasury, after the foolish old method now happily 
becoming obsolete, but merely to be shaped and directed. 
They are not indolent, abject, and apathetic, but merely 
unemployed sufferers by a temporary commercial depression. 
Since Russia withdrew her fostering care they have 
patiently been awaiting the revival of business. If so much 
merchandise went into the upper river country in the days 
of the Muscovite regime, to be distributed all over the con- 
tiguous districts^ what an increased traffic would result from 
the impulse of a new successful deal, with Yankee enter- 
prise at the front and the stimulus of inevitable success con- 
stantly before it like a pillar of fire ? 

The territory of Alaska, is naturally divided into two 
immense districts, insular and continental ; and the latter, 
owing to its vast area and mountainous interruptions is 
again subdivided into three districts with more or less dis- 
tinctly defined boundaries and characteristics. The northern 
district, bordering the Arctic Ocean, and comprising a third, 
is principally a series of spruce timber flats and moss 
barrens, or " tundras ; " the eastern division, lying between 
the coast range of mountains and the Rockies, is occupied 
by the broken and diversified country which is drained by 
the upper Yukon, presenting every contour of mountain, 
valley and plain. The southwestern portion, not including 
the Alaska peninsula, and the Aleutian Islands, is in large 
part a spruce timbered flat, but the " Alaskan range " of 
mountains, 500 miles or more in length, occupies its 
southern portion. The delta of the Yukon on the west coast, 
is an alluvial fiat. The Yukon, itself, nearly as long as the 
Mississippi, almost bisects the territory. It lies midway 
between the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, flowing in a general 
east and west direction, but with a tremendous curvilinear 
sweep conformable to the outline of the coast, which carries 
it up through seven degrees of latitude into the very verge 
of the Arctic Zone. With its twenty or thirty great tribu- 
taries, it constitutes a vast fluvial system which drains almost 
the entire territory. Besides this, there are several large 



72 OUR NE W ALA SKA. 

rivers like the Stickeen, the Taku, Suchitno, and Copper 
Rivers, which find their way to the sea through great gaps in 
the mountains, and others which drain the glaciers and the 
melted snows of the peaks. On the north shore are several 
large rivers flowing into the Arctic. The prevailing level 
of the great interior plateau is interrupted only by a few 
isolated mountains and mountain ranges, which lie princi- 
pally in the southwest. It is a co-ordinate and extension of 
the plateau of the Columbia and the country south of it, 
between the same meridians, except that the arid sage and 
prickly pear of the latter are replaced in Alaska by bound- 
less grass prairies and the so-called " tundras," on which 
the moss grows knee-deep, nurtured into rank exuberance 
by the constant melting under the fervid heat of midsummer 
of the omnipresent stratum of ice, which underlies it. In 
like manner the grain of Manitoba and the Northwest 
Territory is stimulated into a marvelous yield by the very 
instrumentality which wiseacres in the early period of inves- 
tigation declared would kill it. And the interior of Alaska 
is much milder than the region which lies east of the 
Rockies in the same latitude, as every body knows. The 
conditions of prolific growth in high latitudes are continu- 
ous moisture, and a temperature sufficiently high and evenly 
maintained to constitute an equivalent for the longer sea- 
sons of lower latitudes where rainfall is insufficient. 
Maturity can be secured by a forcing process in half the 
time that is reached by natural operations where the tem- 
perature and irrigation are uneven. In the long days of an 
Alaskan midsummer the sun dips but little below the 
horizon, and Venus, the brightest star that shines, alone is 
visible at midnight. Between sunset and sunrise the 
warmed earth suffers no temporary chill, even though per- 
petual ice lies not two feet beneath. Cole's new system of 
subsoil irrigation, which is attracting such general attention, 
and shows such prodigious results, is merely an arti- 
ficial application of the natural process in operation under 
the shadows of the north pole. It counteracts solar evapo- 
ration, supplying moisture to the growing plants as they 
need it, and becomes, as it were, the measure of the fertility 
of the soil. It is not unusual to find the ground frozen eight 
feet deep in northern Minnesota ; and if it freezes a hundred 
feet deep in Alaska, what does it signify, more or less ? 

When the future requirements of settlement shall test the 
capabilities of the interior climate, it will undoubtedly be 
found as fruitful as Minnesota for all crops not requiring a 
long period of ripening. 




TOTEM-POLES. 



AN INTERIOR VIEW. 75 

Lieutenant Schwatka says that luxuriant moss fields and 
great timber flats, densely covered with spruce, extend to 
the very verge of the Arctic Ocean. In his admirable 
report, which is more tropical than boreal in its coloring, he 
refers to these frequently, and to the great bands of caribou 
or reindeer which find pasturage on the tundra. He writes 
of grass-covered bluffs along the rivers ; of foot-hills, with 
an impenetrable underbrush of deciduous vegetation ; of 
vast expanses of treeless prairie, of thick black loamy soil ; 
of rank dead grass, which remains over until June from the 
previous year, looking like fields of yellow stubble. He 
speaks of thunder storms, of broods of young grouse early 
in June, of flowers on all sides, of cloudless skies and 
blistering sun, of wild hops and onions and berries in pro- 
fusion, of myriads of great mosquitoes, which drive the 
game to the mountain slopes above the timber line, and 
other like phenomena altogether at variance with commonly 
conceived opinions of the territory. Up to the very head- 
waters of the Yukon and its lateral tributaries, the noble 
salmon run ; the adjacent lakes are filled with salmon 
trout, which reach ten pounds in weight, and all the 
brooklets teem with mountain trout like those of Montana ; 
in the long reaches of the Yukon itself, as well as in 
its fluvial feeders, grayling which weigh a pound may be 
caught in great abundance ; and if one will pass through 
the country in mid-summer, as Schwatka did, he will find 
brush camps and canvas tents lining the river banks at 
frequent intervals, where the Indians are curing fish for 
their winter supply ; and should he for any reason pene- 
trate beyond into those vast tracts which white men have 
seldom trod, he will discover other Indians with stores of 
hides and pelts stripped from the scores of cariboo and 
moose which they have captured among the willow copses 
of the far-reaching "tundras," or perchance the skins of a 
few black or grizzly bears picked up accidentally beside 
some river bank or shore of lake — for the Indians fear to 
hunt in the tangles of the forest where the multitude of 
bears and the difficulties of the jungle make it unsafe to 
look even for small game ; and so they resort only to run- 
ways there, and the methods of the " still hunt." There is 
no use for hounds in the coverts of Alaska ; they might as 
well try to run through an osage hedge. The Indians use 
the reindeer or cariboo hide for clothing, dog-harness, and 
covering of tepees, or lodges ; and the very fact that so 
slight a habitation is a sufficient protection against the 
extremest rigors of the climate is evidence of its compara- 



76 OUR NEW ALA SKA. 

tive mildness ; albeit the Indians of the lower river have 
greater need of more substantial houses, which they build 
like those of white folks, with boards riven from the helm- 
lock and smoothed with adzes, thatching them with the bark 
of cedar. The tundras or moss barrens where they hunt 
professionally, and except for daily supply, are similar to 
the " muskegs " of northern Minnesota, and the adjacent 
country — not wholly a growth of yielding moss, knee deep, 
but interjected with thickets of willows and mingled with 
rank, coarse grass which grows breast high ; sometimes they 
are interspersed with cranberry bogs and patches of wild 
roses, with here and there a slough or pocket of water, dyed 
wine-color with the steepings of the dead leaves and mosses. 
Walking over a tundra is like promenading a feather-bed. 
This thick undergrowth of moss is found in all the forests 
and above the timber line as well ; and a lady correspondent 
of the American Register, of Paris, France, who is a botanist 
and an impulsive student of the woodlands, has written : 

" The Alaskan forests are the finest, in a picturesque way, 
in the United .States. Trees grow upright from prostrate 
and dead trees, from the tops of stumps, and they are draped 
with black and white moss, dry, fine, and crinkly, like hair, 
which produce a most weird and Druidical effect. Mosses 
grow to a depth of from six to ten inches, and on the 
top of stumps, dead branches, and every dead thing is 
cushioned deep with moss and draped with vines. Par- 
ticularly does the Cornns Canadensis enwreath logs and 
stumps in the most charming way." All of which I hope 
will corroborate what others say of the exuberance of 
Alaska ; yet I think the tree mosses there can in nowise 
compare with those of Florida or Louisiana. 

The upper portion of the Yukon valley, or rather the 
entire region which the upper river drains, is spoken of as 
almost a perfected Eden. Flowers bloom, beneficent plants 
yield their berries and fruits ; majestic trees spread their 
umbrageous fronds, and song birds make the branches 
vocal. The water of the streams is pure and pellucid ; 
the blue of the rippled lakes is like Geneva's ; their banks 
resplendent with verdure, and with grass and shining peb- 
bles. Wherever the rocks lift up their crags they are 
cushioned with luxurious moss. Nature is enjoying a 
grateful surcease from labor. Lower down, in the middle 
country, the creation is quite unfinished. One can per- 
ceive that the processes of the glacial forces are still in 
operation. All the fluvial waters are white or milky with 
the glacial mud washed down from the sluices of the out- 



AN INTERIOR VIEW. 77 

lying chains of mountains, where the Titanic pulverizers of 
their rocky flanks are yet industriously grinding. Like the 
muddy Missouri into the limpid Mississippi, pours the 
impetuous White River into the Yukon, with a current so 
swift that it sends its discolored waters, chalky with the 
debris of the glaciers nearly across the other streams, 
changing its sparkling blue into an element which even the 
fish avoid. A few miles below the White another river of 
the same size and character comes in, called the Stewart ; 
and others still, at frequent intervals — at least a dozen of 
them — as far down as the majestic Porcupine near Fort 
Yukon, five hundred miles or more. All such lakes as are 
widenings of the river beds are bordered with deep deposits 
of the same mud, which are gradually filling them up, pre- 
paring a richness of alluvial land which in the course of a 
brief span of geological time will constitute the most fertile 
fields of all the hyperborean world. And a thousand miles 
further down, the outflow of the Yukon delta is building 
out land in the Bering Sea, just as has been going on for 
centuries at the mouths of the Mississippi, forming shoals, 
dangerous to approach from the outboard, which every 
storm lashes into a muddy froth. The delta of the Yukon 
is a labyrinth of channels and islands whose upper ends are 
piled yards high with driftwood brought down by the cur- 
rent, and all the levels are fringed and interspersed with 
low willows which have replaced the poplars and spruces of 
the upper country. This is the land of the Esquimaux ; and 
hereaway, not only up stream, but along the coast, one can 
study their native habits and peculiarities, not so primitive 
and boreal as in the Kane country and Greeley land, yet 
still suggestive of sealskin, blubber, and whalebone. 
Though their houses are modern and within the civilizing 
influence of the Greek missions around which they have 
clustered for two generations, one will see their kayaks and 
bidarkas (sealskin canoes) and their toupiks (or summer 
tents of sealskin) scattered along the shore ; and if he 
should search behind the permanent winter dwellings he 
would find a cometik, or sled, convenient for winter use 
early hi September, with sharp-eared dogs at hand to draw 
them at the proper time, though now listless in their summer 
indolence, lazily snapping at flies congregated in the tena- 
cious atmosphere of stale fish. On pegs inside hang 
hairless sealskin boots well tanned and preserved by their 
natural oil, waterproof jackets made of walrus intestines, 
which find a ready sale to the tribes far southward, nets 
made of the prepared fibers of the sea-kelp, queer fish- 



78 OUR NEW ALA SKA. 

hooks of wood and bone, and many an ornament or 
utensil into whose ingenious composition are fabricated 
portions of the skeletons and integuments of walrus, seal 
and whale. 

Such are the varied features of our interior domain, not 
less foreign because our flag floats over them, but con- 
cerning us the more on that account, and well worth our 
investigation, not merely as hunters of curios, but as 
speculators and shrewd men of business. Undoubtedly 
portions of Alaska are very charming at certain seasons of 
the year, but the sophisticated explorer will incline to avoid 
them in fly-time. The romance of natural history is not 
confined exclusively to the tropics. The mosquitoes of 
Alaska are unquestionably bigger than the southern bred, 
and the higher up the Arctic pole we climb, the bigger and 
more insatiate they become. " In fact," says Schwatka, 
" our greatest inconvenience within the Arctic circle was 
the tropical heat (July 29th) and the dense swarms of gnats 
and mosquitoes that met us everywhere when we approached 
the land. That night none of the party could sleep notwith- 
standing the mosquito bars over us." But our summer 
saunterers along the coast will have none of these ex- 
cruciating experiences. There are no pestiferous insects 
to be dreaded, for every blessed breath which blows from 
the south will waft them inland, over the hills and far 
away. Seated in his comfortable easy chair on deck, while 
the steamer steadily pursues her weaving way through the 
clustering islands, each happy tourist who languidly follows 
these closing lines will be content to take for granted the 
truth of what they say, and scarcely incline at present to 
push the matter to a personal inquiry. 




SEAL-SKIN BIDARKA. 



HOME OF THE SIWASH. 



From the broad blue waters of Puget Sound to Bering 
Strait, beyond the Aleutian Isles, the high-prowed gondo- 
las of the natives are ever present. Crossing some wind- 
swept sound with bellying sails, gliding under the shadow 
of bold shores or drawn high and dry among the rocks 
before some temporary camp, they animate a solitude whose 
vast loneliness would otherwise be wearisome, despite the 
exquisite charms of the natural scenery. Whenever a 
steamer comes to an anchor, no matter in however so 
sequestered a cove or fiord, a half dozen canoes appear as if 
by magic, where none were visible before, and surround the 
vessel, eager to dispose of curios to the passengers. "Sitkum 
tolla (half a dollar), sitkwn tolla ! " pipes the shrill treble of 
the klootchmen, using the common Chinook vernacular, as 
they hold up to view their baskets, mats, miniature canoes, 
and carved spoons made from the horn of the mountain goat. 
"Sitkum tolla ! " chimes in the deeper voice of the stolid 
Siwash, who steadies the cranky craft with his paddle. And 
one of the smart Alecks among the passengers, who under- 
stands human nature better than Chinook, yells back : 
" Sixteen dollars be hanged, I'll give you $2.50." And so 
the trade is eagerly made, but the market is spoiled for the 
rest of the passengers, and Aleck enjoys a short-lived tri- 
umph until he learns true wisdom by experience. 

As ponies are to the plains Indians, so are canoes to the 
shore dwellers of the Pacific. They are the universal vehicles, 
of locomotion and livelihood. In all Alaska there are but 
three horses, and one of these is said to be a mule. Be- 
yond the limits of compact populations there are no roads, 
excepting foot trails over the mountains, only the intermin- 
able waterways through archipelagoes and long rivers which 
penetrate far into the land ; and the Indian who wishes to 
haul freight or travel, instead of hitching up his team, 
simply launches his canoe. These craft are of several 
different patterns, but the distinctive type is quite like a 
batteau in outline, high and sharp at both ends, with a 
broad flare and an inordinate prolongation of prow, which 



So UR NE W ALA SKA. 

is often ornamented with grotesque carvings of nondescript 
creatures, animals, birds or fishes. One model has a pro- 
jecting prow or beak below the water-line, precisely like 
that of the old triremes of the Romans and the modern ram 
of our war ships. There is another pattern similar to the 
common Indian birch canoe. Their old-fashioned war ca- 
noes were formidable craft, carrying a hundred men, and 
Alaskan history relates how a fleet of ten of these made an 
expedition of 1,000 miles down the coast to one of the Hud- 
son Bay posts, in the early days, to capture a man against 
whom they had a grievance. The magnitude of their naval 
demonstration is sufficient evidence of their inherent nerve 
and determination. 

Indian trails are found all along the coast, which lead up 
to bodies of fine timber where canoes have been built, and 
the valuable wood otherwise utilized for totem poles and 
for carving and building purposes. Upon some of these 
trails much labor has been expended in bridging ravines, 
corduroying marshy places, and cutting through trunks of 
fallen trees no less than six feet in diameter. Across the 
mountain ranges, in the interior, white birch grows to great 
size, and there its bark is substituted for the cedar. Dug- 
outs of cottonwood are also used in broken water. There 
are no skin canoes used in Alaska south of Bering Sea. 
The largest wooden canoes are more than fifty feet long, 
capable of carrying sixty men, hewn from great cedar logs 
with much labor, being dug out with axes, and then thinned 
with ' adzes to the required thickness. They are next 
steamed by filling the cavities or holes with water heated 
by hot stones, so as to give them their graceful curves, 
after which they are spread to the desired width and 
braced. They have often as much as eight feet beam. 
Usually they are painted black outside, but when new 
they often show quaint decorations, in bright colors, 
which, however, are very soon lost by weathering. The 
Indians take as great care of their canoes as the Arabs 
do of their horses. When not in use they are drawn 
up on sloping beaches in front of their villages or 
camps, and carefully covered with brush, mats or sails to 
protect them from the weather. A native will take off 
his own coat to wrap around the ornamental prow of his 
boat, which is as much as he would do for his " klootch." 
The best of the canoes, of course, cost a high figure, and 
great pains is frequently employed in clearing away bowlders 
and rocks to provide a snug berth for them upon the beach. 
They are weatherly craft in a sea way, and the fact that none 



HOME OF THE SI WASH. 8 1 

of them are decked, speaks with high testimony of the 
habitually quiet moods of the Pacific, to say nothing of 
skillful seamanship. The native Alaskan is seldom wrecked 
or drowned. In tempestuous weather he propitiates the 
spirit of the storm by tossing a few wads of tobacco into the 
rock caves alongshore, and in calm he leisurely stuffs the 
same into his pipe and smokes serenely. By the way, these 
people smoke less than any others I have ever met, which is 
a fact phenomenal. One seldom sees a native with a pipe in 
his mouth. 

In the dry and sunny days of summer, when the salmon 
are running, and the climate is uniform perfection, the tem- 
perature scarcely varying ten degrees from sun to sun and 
month to month, the Siwash locks his winter cabin and 
takes his " klootch " and fishing outfit to some choice loca- 
tion where he can catch and cure a supply of fish for 
winter's use; and as the natives incline to be gregarious and 
combine for mutual help in hauling nets and hunting, he 
usually has plenty of company. Very picturesque are their 
aggregations of canvas tents and shanties of bark and 
boards which skirt the shore of some landlocked cove under 
the shelter of some circumjacent forest and overshadowing 
mountain, with busy canoes plying to and fro with the seines, 
and the klootchmen spreading out the ruddy salmon on the 
adjacent rocks to dry. " Klootch," or klootchman, is 
synonym for woman in the Chinook lingo, who may be wife, 
concubine, mistress, or actual slave, for partnership attach- 
ments are not always fixed by formulas of marriage in that 
lone country ; and every sojourner has his " klootch " in 
wedlock or otherwise, who acts as constant housekeeper or 
handmaiden. In the same vernacular her liege is known as 
" Siwash," which is a corruption of the French word sauvage, 
and is applied to the male sex generally. 

A queer jargon is this Chinook. Once upon a time, 
when very many nations were represented by a very few peo- 
ple in that vast region dominated by the fur companies, em- 
bracing Oregon and Washington Territories and all the 
country lying to the northward (the French perhaps being 
numerically the strongest), a sort of congress of national 
representatives formulated this universal language to 
facilitate intercourse. The words in most common use 
were adopted, a few of them purely native dialect, but 
a very large proportion bastard French. The remainder 
are simply phonetic, expressing, when pronounced, the 
ideas conveyed by the sounds ; for instance, amusement 
is "he-he," rain "patter-chuck," a crow "caw-caw," a 



82 OUR NEW ALA SKA. 

cough " hoh-hoh" the heart " tum-ium" a handkerchief 
" hak-at-chum" etc. There are about five hundred and 
fifty words in all, and with this limited vocabulary and 
the use of signs, a man can travel the whole North-west 
over from Central Montana to Bering Sea. In fact, 
Chinook has almost superseded the native dialects, of which 
there are no less than ten upon the coast, and perhaps as 
many more in the interior. The different tribes seldom 
attempt to converse in each other's language. There are a 
few words in which the letter "1" is substituted for "r," 
Chinese fashion, indicating possibly an ancient Asiatic con- 
nection ; for most of such words are appropriated from the 
native tongues, a fact which no doubt must be gratifying 
to those who claim to be able to prove that the Chinese were 
the earliest discoverers of America. 

In the early days when the monotony of isolation was 
varied by reprisals among the tribes, slaves were habitually 
made by the victors, and I have heard it stated by white 
men who claim to have been residents at the time, and cog- 
nizant of the circumstances, that the Shimpshean Indians, 
near Dixon Channel, used to kill and eat certain parts of 
their prisoners, taking bites from the fleshy portions of 
the arm and breast and thigh to give them courage 
" skookum tum-ium." Others placed the necks of their 
captives across a log, fastening the bodies to the ground by 
saplings weighted with stones at the ends, and so killed 
them with axes. Slaves were often killed at " house- 
warmings," one being placed under each of the corner up- 
rights when the frame was raised, the ceremony being 
sometimes attended with the greatest cruelty. With a 
house of irregular foundation lines the sacrifice of life was 
great. One occasionally catches accidental glimpses of 
old-time war-implements which indicate an ancient degree 
of savagery out of which these people seem to have long 
since passed. Slavery however continues to this day, and 
a sort of traffic is constantly maintained, whose conditions 
are more binding than the obligations of matrimony. 
Women often, and sometimes men, are traded for a valu- 
able consideration, or thrown into a bargain as a sort of 
remplisage — white people not seldom being the purchasers ; 
and I have heard that those so obtained make far more 
dutiful servants than others who farm out their labor, show- 
ing conscientious fidelity in their obligatory relationship. 
Some of the old settlers have women living with them 
whose legal status it would be difficult to determine, but so 
it is in all the wilderness domain of the fur companies, the 



HOME OF THE SI WASH. 83 

number of the half-breeds in the North-west being counted 
by tens of thousands. On the Alaskan coast the hybrid 
product of a native crossed with a Russian is designated a 
" Creole," as with the French and Spanish mixtures in the 
Gulf of Mexico and West Indies. 

At Kasaan Bay the Indian widow of old Baronovick, the 
Russian smuggler, still lives, with a goodly inheritance and 
two buxom daughters, which, I have been informed, are at 
disposal for the moderate sum of $4,000 — for the lot ! The 
girls, as I saw them, seated on their home-veranda near 
the savory salmon cannery, and dressed in comely black 
dresses of modern mode, were not bad looking. The young 
women of the coast are uniformly comely, but their mouths 
are immense, and they have an excess of adipose, which 
grows greasy and more flabby as they grow older. They 
are very partial to gaudy frocks; but the prevailing costume 
is a black shawl over a calico skirt, and a bright yellow 
kerchief over the head. Very often they blacken their 
faces with deer tallow and charcoal, some say to keep off 
mosquitoes, some to improve their complexions, and others 
to hide defects. The older women thrust great stone orna- 
ments into their pendulous ears, and even some young 
women use a lip pin of silver, steel, or bone, which they 
push outward through the flesh from the inside of the lower 
lip. It is said this is the badge of wife-hood. But such 
fashions are not pretty. Like many of their discarded cus- 
toms and implements, they are the relics of a barbarism 
which passed away fully two generations ago. The girls 
look much better, according to modern ideas, in their silver 
bracelets and earrings, and the marvel is how so great 
improvement has taken place in so comparatively short a 
time. I have seen some of the gray-headed old folks take 
from their capacious chests souvenirs, such as medicine- 
rattles, masks, dance-blankets, stone war-clubs and idols ; 
and I fancied they regarded them tenderly, with some 
lingering regrets of the old time ; but very often they will 
part with these readily for cash to the curio-hunters, who 
frequently pay most exorbitant prices. Industry is one 
of the virtues of the Alaskans. When the men are not en- 
gaged in fishing and hunting, or employed at the several 
canneries on the coast, they build canoes and houses, pack 
goods on their backs over the mountains to the mines, and 
do all sorts of manual labor. They are very powerful. 
The regulation pack-load is seventy-five pounds. With 
this on their backs they will keep ahead of the most experi- 
enced mountain climbers, and I know of one who packed 



84 OUR NEW ALA SKA. 

over a steep new trail, which was hardly more than 
blazed and cleared, a load of 125 pounds, to-wit: two sacks 
of flour, a shovel, some drills, a ten-pound salmon, and his 
clothes and blankets. They do tremendous tasks on very 
short commons, but when they do get afoul of a full kettle 
they never leave it while there is a mouthful left. In camp 
they are splendid attendants, drying wet clothes, cleaning 
guns, cooking, building shelters, and doing all manner of 
" chores." Once I followed the trail six miles over the 
mountain from Juneau into Silver Bow Basin, and was as- 
tonished at the work going on there in hydraulic and placer 
mining. Sluices were built or dug up to the very snow 
line, and ten-inch iron pipes, as well as every other article 
of use and construction, and contents of dwellings and stores 
had been carried there upon the backs of Indians at one cent 
a pound ! These men are ambitious to earn praise and 
money, and are not mere eye-servants. The women, too, 
are seldom idle, and when at home are occupied with the 
needle, or with braiding, weaving, basket-making and em- 
broidery. Dogs are always members of the household. 
They are civil and mild-mannered, like their owners, and sel- 
dom bark. In the winter season they also do their share 
of appointed work, dragging sleds over the deep snows and 
freighting goods and fuel when the water courses are frozen. 
They are of the true Esquimaux type, of colors brindle, white 
and tawny. 

However, the Indians have their bad traits as well as their 
good ones. In trading they are very unscrupulous. They 
will take a mean advantage of every opportunity. They 
will not abide by a contract. They will demand back what 
they have already sold, and tell you that their " klootch " 
objects to the trade. Like the strikers in Belgium, they 
put their women in front when they would shield their own 
craven selves. But this is policy ; for they well know the 
consideration with which the whites regard the fair sex. 
Indeed they are themselves quite chivalrous and consider- 
ate toward their women, imposing upon them no inequit- 
able burdens, but assuming upon themselves those heavier 
physical tasks which eastern squaws are obliged to perform 
unassisted ; even declining to excel them in the emulous 
and honorable competition of a canoe race, an act which 
they declare would cover them with everlasting disgrace. 
But it may be that the women wield the better paddle. — 
" Klaxta kiimtux " — who knows ? When a tribe or com- 
munity becomes imbued with the elements of politeness, 
which is refined humanity, there is indeed hope for them. 



HOME OF THE SI WASH. 85 

Nevertheless, they are arrogant and exacting when they 
have the upper hand, and like all subordinates must be kept 
in their lower places. Once the Chilkats threatened to kill 
some miners who wished to cross the mountains over to the 
Yukon, and refused to pack goods for them. The distance 
was seventy miles. But when they discovered that two of 
the miners had started for the gunboat for assistance, they 
wilted at once, and offered to take the party over for noth- 
ing. The moral effect of the gunboat now on the Alaska 
station has proved most potent on more than one occasion. 
It is an admirable substitute for the garrison, which was a 
needless expense and only made trouble. 

The typical native house is a one-room affair built of 
upright split slabs, with a door-way in front and a square 
hole in the roof for the passage of smoke. Sometimes 
there is a small window as well. The bare earth is the floor 
and a goat-skin or a bear-pelt the bed. Dirt, filth and 
abundance are the accessories. The walls and ceilings are 
grimy with smoke ; the pots and kettles smeared with a 
conglomerate of grease ; nothing seems ever to have been 
washed. Every thing is foul and squalid, and the strips of 
dried meat and fish, the oil bladders and pelts hung over 
the low rafters, are eloquent of degradation in the midst of 
plenty. The most pretentious houses in the country, with 
three or four exceptions, are those at Wrangell, some of 
which are 60x30 feet in dimensions, one story high, built of 
logs, planked on the outside, nicely whitewashed, with gable 
roof and doors and windows. They never have chimneys. 
The fire is built in the center of the smooth earthen floor, 
and the smoke escapes through a flat cupola in the roof. 
An elaborately carved and gaudily painted totem pole usu- 
ally ornaments the front. Some of these are sixty feet 
high. They are popularly supposed to have some religious 
significance, but are merely heraldic devices illustrating the 
family history and showing the family crest, whether it be 
bear, beaver, eagle, shark, whale, wolf, frog or raven. To 
injure one was to insult the family to which it belonged ; to 
cut one down, an unpardonable offense, Incidentally, it 
may be mentioned that descent is reckoned through the 
female line, and it seems to prevail throughout the North 
American tribes, a custom which is probably of very ancient 
date. These totems have their counterpart in the pictured 
buffalo robes and coup-sticks of the Indians of the plains. 
To one who has never seen them before the effect is most 
startling. One writer says : 

" Seen in the wet, gray dawn of early morning, as I first 



86 UR NE W ALA SKA. 

saw them, they have a most weird and strange appearance ; 
for the ravens which are carved upon them, the whales and 
the bears, are all of huge proportions, and have a most 
melancholy way of glaring down upon all who stand gazing 
at the barbarous relics." 

But the totem poles are becoming weather-beaten and 
time-worn. The paint is nearly off, never to be renewed, 
and the pride of ancestry and achievement, as manifested 
by visible testimony, seems to have vanished with the pre- 
ceding generation. In many cases similar devices appear 
upon the tombs of the dead. Around the four sides of 'the 
interior of these houses is a raised platform several feet 
wide, the rear portion of which, opposite the entrance, is 
partitioned into state rooms and screened by curtains of 
cotton or woolen stuff. On either side of these sleeping 
apartments are slabs of heraldic devices fixed to the walls. 
The best houses have modern stoves, furniture, crockery 
and kitchen utensils, and are very clean and comfortable 
throughout. There is always a variety of traps, guns, nets, 
fishing implements, harpoons, spears, decoys for catching 
seals and all kinds of fur animals, birds and sea fowl. The 
families have ample supplies of oil suits, rubber boots, 
blankets, miscellaneous clothing, and even ornaments. No 
simple people were ever better " fixed " ; and, as I have 
stated, their capacity for improvement and adaptability to 
hew and better methods of living and doing is very 
marked. 

If some master of the aesthetic school could only instruct 
them properly, what beautiful designs they might contrive 
in mats and rugs and shells and carving, and how hand- 
somely they could embellish their homes ! They have not 
only good taste, but a natural genius which could be culti- 
vated to marked advantage. Their preference for the gro- 
tesque manifests itself in all their ornaments and imple- 
ments, their cooking utensils and their costumes ; and 
there is scarcely an article of adornment, use or wear 
which is not elaborated with studies in natural history, some 
literal and others fanciful and ridiculously distorted. A 
good many devices are simply heraldic, corresponding to 
those seen on their totem poles, like the family crests 
paraded on the panels and dinner-service of people in a 
higher state of civilization. They have elaborate chests 
and boxes of red and yellow cedar ; spoons and dishes 
made from the horns of the mountain goat and sheep, set 
with mother of pearl obtained from the shells of the abe- 
lone ; trays of wood and stone highly polished and wrought 




INDIAN CHIEFS (HYAS-TYEE). 



HOME OF THE SI WASH. 89 

in the forms of frogs, fishes and creatures half-animal and 
half-human ; fish-hooks, harpoons and spears of wood, 
bone, iron and copper, all ornamented with quaint devices ; 
masks and head-dresses made hideous or fanciful by every 
conceivable complexity of adjustment and contrivance ; 
blankets woven from the wool of goats and sheep in alle- 
gorical designs, and shirts of softest buckskin, beautifully 
painted and ornamented with bead-work. They are very 
clever in contriving pipes of old gun-barrels, and also of 
stone, wood and bone, inserting into the bowls of the 
wooden ones the brass collar of a kerosene lamp or the 
slide of an umbrella to serve as a lining. Formerly they 
made women's skirts of cedar bark and the fiber of sea- 
kelp. Some of their manufactures have attracted the 
attention of outside capital, and there are firms in New 
York and San Francisco who are regularly supplied with 
basket work and mats, which are made of the inner bark of 
roots and twigs of trees, shredded, dyed and plaited by 
hand. For dyes they extract the colors from calico, 
blankets, etc., and produce some brilliant hues, but they 
are not permanent. However, as they fade, they get to 
resemble more and more the India and Persian colors, and 
are very pleasing. A better dye of black and yellow was 
obtained from charcoal and a species of moss called sekhone. 
Their hats made of plaited roots and their wicker work are 
skillfully dyed to form pretty patterns. As silversmiths they 
are quite expert, making attractive bracelets from ham- 
mered coin, so attractive that the native market is kept well 
supplied by counterfeits shipped from San Francisco 
makers, which sell readily to tourists at $3.00 to $5.00 per 
pair. One considerable item of their handiwork is the 
manufacture of wooden decoys representing animals, birds, 
seals, etc., which they use in trapping and hunting. They 
cover bottles, demijohns and carboys with exquisite wicker 
work ; they make good beds from moss, caps and tobacco- 
pouches of furs and skins, and water-proof bags and 
pouches from the intestines of animals. Their magicians' 
rattles are perhaps the most elaborate of all their handi- 
work, being made hollow, usually in the form of a strange 
bird covered all over with carvings of strange creatures 
and human deformities, emblematic of the mysteries of 
their profession. They will trade readily for any thing they 
take a fancy to, or which is novel, but as they can buy 
almost any thing at the trading stores, they usually require 
silver coin to complete a purchase. 

Finally they manufacture a beastly intoxicating liquor 



9° 



OUR NEW ALASKA. 



from molasses, called hoochinoo, the equal of which for 
vileness is hard to find anywhere. 

Like many other people with more sense, they have an 
inherent passion for gambling, in the prosecution of which 
the popular implements are polished ivory or bone sticks 
about the size of a pencil, which have their respective 
values and uses, best known to the initiated. 



.^S^ 




INDIAN HOUSES AT VVRANGELL. 



GOOD INDIANS. 



The cold-blooded maxim that the " only good Indians are 
dead Indians " does not apply to the natives of Alaska. 
Whatever may be truly or erroneously stated of the tribes 
east of the Rocky Mountains has small significance with 
respect to the dwellers on the west side. The "great con- 
tinental divide " seems to have segregated traits and char- 
acteristics as effectually as it has separated climates and 
indigenous products. As a whole the Indians of Alaska, 
both of the coast and of the interior, as far as known, are 
normally peaceable, tractable, intelligent, clever, eager to 
learn, useful, and industrious to a degree unknown else- 
where among the aborigines of America. The general 
statement, however, is subject to some qualification, inas- 
much as there are a good many different tribes — ten at least 
on the coast, and perhaps as many more in the interior — ■ 
who are manifestly of divers origins, and, of course, differ 
variously in respect to the meritorious attributes accorded 
to them. Some are very slovenly and semi-barbarous, while 
others have attained a degree of civilization which compares 
favorably with the status of Caucasian communities. Vin- 
cent Colyer said : "Ido not hesitate to say that if three- 
quarters of the natives of Alaska were landed in New York 
as coming from Europe, they would be selected as among 
the most intelligent of the many worthy emigrants who daily 
arrive at that port. In two years they would be admitted 
to citizenship, and in ten years some of their children, under 
the civilizing influence of our eastern public schools, would 
be found members of Congress." The great majority of all 
the people dress wholly or partially in the costume of the 
whites, and in the towns, where there are shops and stores, 
the women affect even the latest procurable fashions in 
frocks and headgear. In complexion, they are olive rather 
than red, not unlike a seafaring man or a worker on a farm ; 
and many of the men wear beards. The Hon. James G. Swan, 
correspondent of the Smithsonian Institution at Port Town- 
send, Wash., who has made a special study of Pacific coast 
ethnology, thinks the whole population up to the Arctic 



92 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

belt have a common origin among the Aztecs, and attempts 
to establish this position by demonstrating an identity of 
many generic words common to both languages, and by 
similarity of features, implements, handiwork, carvings and 
religious emblems and ceremonies. One strong corrobora- 
tive coincidence rests on some old-time silver idols, which 
are quite identical in size, feature, and figure with the Chir- 
iqui idols of the Isthmus of Panama. Capt. Beardslee, U. 
S. N., who has likewise carefully investigated the subject, 
sustains Mr. Swan, so far as respects the tribe of Hydahs, who 
are exclusive occupants of Queen Charlotte's Island, in lati- 
tude 51 deg., but regards all other coast tribes as of Asiatic 
origin. He thinks the Hydahs were driven north by Cortez 
during the Spanish invasion. Diametrically opposite is Mr. 
Newton H. Crittenden, in the West Shore Magazine pub- 
lished at Portland, Or., who infers from incidental evidences 
that the Hydahs are castaways from Eastern Asia, who, 
first reaching the islands of Southern Alaska, soon took and 
held possession of the Queen Charlotte group. Mr. Edward 
Vining, in his new book entitled " The Discovery of Amer- 
ica ; or the Uncelebrated Columbus," inclines to a Chinese 
origin and reiterates the story from the original Chinese 
sources of the landing of Hwin Shin and a party of Bud- 
dhist monks on the coast of Mexico about the year 500 a.d. 
The spot marked out is about 20,000 Chinese miles east 
from Kamtchatka. There is also a record that the indi- 
genous populations reached a high degree of civilization. 
The houses were small, and of wood ; stone dwellings were 
not known. The people knew how to write, and used a 
paper made from cotton wool. They wore garments of fine 
linen. There was no iron, but copper, gold, and silver 
existed in large quantities. Also the fact is on record of 
the Spaniards finding at Quivisa the wrecks of large ships 
which Mr. Vining feels assured were of Chinese origin. 
The Hurons also had a tradition that ages ago their ances- 
tors were visited by beardless men clad in silk and wearing 
pigtails. 

There is assuredly a strong facial resemblance between 
the Chinese coolies now living on the coast and some of the 
native Indians. They seem to affiliate naturally, and to 
have some few words of common derivation. It is also true 
that there are Alaskan words of Aztec construction, espe- 
cially those having the terminal " tl " and "xtl." With 
regard to the Hydahs, they certainly have a remarkable 
physical and intellectual superiority over all the other Paci- 
fic coast Indians, while maivked contrasts in the structure of 



GOOD INDIANS. 93 

their language denote a different origin from them. They 
are of fine stature, with exceptionally well-developed chests 
and arms, high foreheads, and lighter complexions than any 
other North American Indians. These people are engaged 
in the manufacture of fish-oil on a large and scientific scale, 
and they have a Protestant mission and trading post. It is 
proper to state that this tribe, with the exception of small 
detachments, is attached to British Columbia and not to 
Alaska, being situated a short distance south of the Alaska 
boundary ; and it is equally proper to credit their enviable 
condition to the wise policy pursued by the British govern- 
ment in cultivating friendly relations with them and educa- 
ting them to employments suited to their inclination and 
tastes. The plan of the British government has been 'never 
to recognize the Indian title, but certain tracts of land most 
prized by the Indians have "been appropriated to their 
exclusive use, while at the same time they were made to 
understand that they must earn their own living the same 
as the white men they saw around them. It is gratifying to 
know that this view is likely to obtain with us henceforth, 
and to govern our own policy hereafter. Yet it must be 
allowed that the Indian problem in the United States has 
been more difficult to manage from the outset, because the 
Indians were vastly more numerous, wilder, and subject to 
food conditions which made them constantly nomadic, in- 
stead of communal and stationary. On the Pacific coast 
the advent of the white man has never diminished the food 
supply of the natives. They have fruit and game as before 
; .n abundance, and more fish than they know what to do 
with, while the lessons in farming which have been taught 
them have given them a source of food supply and variety 
which they were previously ignorant of ; so that they have 
never been compelled by starvation to make reprisals, like 
the transmontane plains Indians, to whom the buffalo in its 
prime supplied houses, fuel, food, clothes and utensils all at 
once. To the latter the extinction of the animals was like 
cutting down the palm trees to the South Sea Islanders ; 
and the shifts to which they have been forced in conse- 
quence are what is subduing them to the methods of those 
who toil for bread. 

In writing of the Indians of the Pacific coast, it is not 
easy to segregate the tribes of Alaska as distinct from most 
of the others, for all of them have many traits, customs, 
peculiarities and occupations in common, and some are 
intermixed by marriage. It is true, however, that the 
inhabitants of our new possession are much more degraded 



94 OUR NEW ALA SKA. 

and generally demoralized than those of British Columbia, 
whatever they may have been under the Muscovite occupa- 
tion. Dawson's book, entitled " Indian Tribes of British 
Columbia," gives a very correct idea of the present status of 
the British Indians. While the Russians held possession of 
Alaska they also exercised a conservative and fostering care 
over their wards under a similar policy and system ; but 
since the American succession, the Indians have been left 
without visible control or guidance, and their course has 
been miserably downward. For nineteen years their 
women have been the special prey of a large floating popu- 
lation, and both sexes suffer a great deal from resulting 
maladies and consumption, and many are blind. Old age 
is rare, and all look old at forty. The Russians established 
churches, mills, and trading posts along the coast, but the 
agents of Uncle Sam have let every thing go to decay and 
ruin, and at the capital itself (Sitka) the official quarters are 
located in buildings whose roof and gables are open to the 
weather, and the foundation timbers nearly undermined by 
rot ! No wonder the natives are laggards in the race of 
self-improvement. 

For a long time after the American succession they main- 
tained a hostile and often aggressive attitude. With all 
moral support and conserving influences withdrawn, they 
relapsed into partial savagery. For many years there was 
no civil government whatever in the territory. The 
" Shamans " or native magicians began to regain their 
ascendency over the people. The garrisons stationed at 
Sitka and Wrangell kept perpetually drunk on home-made 
hoochinoo ; they debauched the women and quarreled with 
the men. All industries along the coast were paralyzed. 
No business was done. There were none to buy the furs 
which the hunters had trapped and collected, and utter ruin 
seemed inevitable. At present, however, thanks to a com- 
bination of wise measures and ameliorating influences which 
have extended over the past six years, the country has set- 
tled into serenity of hope, and good order everywhere pre- 
vails. The Indians are hostile no more. They have 
pledged themselves to perpetual amity ; a consummation 
chiefly effected through the instrumentality of a wau-wau f 
or conference held with the hyas-joint or grand commission 
of 1880, at which the first condition imposed by the Indians 
was " teachers, so that our children may not grow up stupid 
like their fathers ! " In one brief hour of conviction they 
spontaneously abandoned the traditions of the past and 
never looked back to the flesh-pots of barbarism. They 



GOOD INDIANS. 95 

were willing and ready to accept the new dispensation, to 
live by it, and to qualify themselves to promote it. All they 
wanted was, to receive it undefiled. These Indians have 
sagaciously forecast their approaching opportunity, and are 
looking for the advent of commercial ventures with eager 
longing and open hands ready for employment. It would 
seem as if the red men were in advance of the philanthro- 
pists. All they want is a clean deal, and it is the fault of 
the government if it does not step in and occupy a field so 
nearly ripe for the harvest. The resources of Alaska are 
now known to be varied and rich enough to tempt invest- 
ment. The outlook is propitious, and the natives will aid 
us in every way to find out all there is to know about the 
country. 

The history of this palaver by which the entire popula- 
tion of the country may be said to have been conciliated at 
one diplomatic stroke, is interesting if not remarkable, inas- 
much as the key of the situation came to hand at the very 
outset. It seems that a domestic quarrel was on the eve of 
an outbreak between the Chilkats and Chilkoots in conse- 
quence of a drunken brawl the previous summer, at which 
blood was shed, and which could only be expiated by a 
requital in kind, or its equivalent in blankets ; and as the 
Chilkats did not consider the dead Chilkoot worth quite 
one hundred blankets (say $400), the usual " potlatch " 
preliminary to a war was in progress at the date of the pro- 
posed " wau-wau " (Aug. 24, 1880), at which fully three 
thousand Indians were estimated to be present. The object 
of the " wau-wau," or conference, to which the contestants 
were peremptorily invited by the naval commandant of the 
Alaska station, backed by a persuasive gun-boat, was to 
settle the difficulty without war, and to re-establish peace. 
Now, nearly all of the Indians of Alaska are, according to 
tradition, descended from the Chilkats, and among these 
descendants are the Chilkoots, who have largely inter-mar- 
ried with them. The villages of the two tribes are about 
thirty miles distant from each other, situated well up the 
rivers, one of which, the Chilkat, flowing southeast, and the 
other southwest, converge to the head of a narrow peninsula 
which divides the upper end of Chatham Straits into two 
bays. There is a trail and portage across this peninsula, 
and at the lower Chilkat village on the west side, and at 
Portage Bay on the east, the two tribes meet to trade or get 
drunk when in harmony. At Portage Bay the post agent 
is in the confidence of the two. The Chilkats are the most 
powerful and warlike of all the tribes and as they have 



96 OUR NEW ALA SKA. 

always dominated the trade with the interior tribes, it is 
obvious that a maintenance of friendship and amicable 
intercourse with them was all important to secure the pro- 
tection of such whites as were prospecting in the far-off 
interior, as well as to conserve the future welfare of the 
entire territory. The happy result of the conference is 
thus related in Capt. Beardslee's own written account, 
addressed to the author of this book at the date of the 
occurrence. The vessel which did duty on the momentous 
occasion was the North west Trading Company's tug-boat, 
" Favorite" with a howitzer in the bow and a gatling 
mounted on the upper deck. The regular naval coast 
detail, the " Jamestown," lay in Sitka harbor. I quote : 

Pyramid Harbor, August 25. 

" That you get this letter may be a sign and token to you 
that success has crowned our efforts. I gave in yesterday 
afternoon, too restless to continue my summing up, and in 
spite of my prudent resolution donned my shooting habili- 
ments and started across the trail. About half way over I 
met in single file, first Pierre Errassan, who, with his hand- 
some six feet of figure arrayed in red shirt, leggins, and well 
revolvered, would have made a capital robber in Fra 
Diavolo ; and behind him five Indians, the foremost of 
whom I at once recognized by descriptions I had had as 
Klotz-Klotz, the chief of the Chilkats, a tall, well-built, dig- 
nified old fellow, from whose good looks, however, a wad 
of cotton, stuffed into a hole in his left cheek, somewhat 
detracted. From this hole, caused by a gun-shot wound, 
one of his sobriquets, " Hole-in-the-Cheek," has been 
derived. With him was another veteran, almost equally 
powerful with himself and much older, Klotz being about 
sixty and Kak-na-tay about seventy or more. Both wel- 
comed me most heartily, for in spite of my decidedly unmil- 
itary rig, Errassan, with true shrewdness and French polite- 
ness combined, drew himself stiffly up as we neared each 
other, and making to me the most profound obeisance, 
omitted to offer me his hand, thus paying tribute to my 
greatness, which was his trump card with the Indians, and 
most gracefully and solemnly introduced me. 

" The costume of Klotz and Kak was not so gorgeous as 
to add to my discomfiture, as both they and their attend- 
ants were arrayed in blankets and leggins ; but in a big box 
carried by the latter was the wardrobe, in which he had 
expected to astonish and impress me. The retainers were 
in war paint, with cotton or down on their heads, which 



GOOD INDIANS. 97 

indicated determination. Thus stripped of all external 
show of power, the old chief and I sat down under a great 
cedar tree and discussed the situation. I think that this 
meeting was a fortunate one, for I had with me cigars and 
a breech-loader, the free use of both of which I at once 
accorded; and the influence of a large meerschaum pipe, 
which some months ago I sent him as a present, had its 
weight. After all, if the true history of wars and diplomacy 
could be written, how many times such little matters have 
had more weight than elaborate speeches, convincing only 
their utterer. Free from disturbing influences, Klotz-Klotz 
unbosomed himself, and during that interview he admitted 
to me that his family was in the wrong, and that he would 
willingly assist in establishing peace. He claimed that the 
killed Chilkoot was not worth a hundred blankets, but that 
he would pay two hundred if no less would heal the breach. 
" The post trader made Klotz & Co. comfortable for the 
night, and this morning about ten o'clock several large 
canoes, with flags flying, drums (Indian drums) beating, and 
propelled by about a dozen painted paddlers, each came 
around the point of Chilkoot Inlet and were shortly along- 
side. In the foremost was Danawah, the chief of the lower 
village, and a blind old Shaman, who is chief of the Chil- 
koots. They were directed to go ashore to the post trader's, 
to wait until the firing of a gun announced the readiness of 
the Tyhees to receive them. They refused to go to the 
trader's, because the Chilkats, their enemies, were there, 
but instead paddled in to the mouth of a creek, where on 
the beach they prepared and ate their meal and donned 
their pow-wow garments. At 11 the sharp bark of the 
howitzer summoned them to the meeting, and both parties 
came alongside on different sides of the boat, and avoiding 
all intercourse with each other. When duly seated in the 
cabin they presented a not undignified appearance. All 
wore good American clothes, of which the coats were orna- 
mented with more or less insignia of various ranks of 
American and English officers of both army and navy, 
white shirts and shoes and stockings. On our side of the 
table, epaulets and full dress undoubtedly produced good 
effect. The interview lasted two hours, and during it the 
whole difficulty was adjusted, and when we left the stifling 
atmosphere of the cabin — for Indians even of high rank are 
odorous — for the upper deck we were a party of friends all 
under pledges for mutual benefit. Mine to them was, in 
answer to the request of both parties, ' Yes; I will do my 
utmost to assist you in this matter,' which matter was this : 



98 OUR NEW ALA SKA . 

" When you go to your country please tell them to send 
teachers to us as well as to the Stickeens, so that our chil- 
dren may not grow up stupid like their fathers." (The 
Stickeens are the Indians at Wrangell, where the Presby- 
terians have established a mission school which is doing 
much good.) I believe that they will keep their promises 
to treat well all white men coming to their country, and I 
know I will mine, and through you I now ask of any Chris- 
tians you may have among your readers — and I doubt not 
that such there are — to send to the missionary at Sitka, such 
articles as will be useful to the school which Mrs. Dickson, 
the wife of the post trader, has started on her own hook, 
and at which half a hundred children are being taught, and 
which is soon to be transferred to a neat frame building, 
which, designed for a store at Taku, has been, by Capt. 
Vanderbilt, given to the Indians at Portage Bay, and on 
each side of which building the Chilkats and Chilkoots, now 
re-united, promise to build villages so that their children 
may attend the schools. 

" The Indians were entertained by a few shots fired from 
the howitzer, and more by several volleys from the gatling 
which was mounted aft, and which was made to sweep an 
arc of one hundred and eighty degrees, at good canoe dis- 
tance. 

"Then they paddled ashore in company, lit a camp fire, 
and began a friendly potlatch on the beach, and we, satisfied 
with the day's work, started at 3 P. M. for home, as we have 
learned to consider Sitka, and are now anchored in a snug 
harbor for the night. 

" Yours &c, L. A. B." 

" Potlatch " is a term of varying significance applied to 
any assemblage, for whatsoever purpose, at which good 
cheer is provided. Sometimes a native will invite his 
friends to a house-raising and give away more grub and 
blankets than ten such houses would cost to build. Pot- 
latches are given at the outset of great undertakings, and in 
commemoration of the same. In its primary sense a pot- 
latch is a gift. In its expression, as an economic, or social, 
or moral force, it amplifies the uses and applications of the 
customary tobacco pipe in all grave affairs of red-men. It 
is preliminary to weighty councils, social entertainments, 
business undertakings, unexpected meetings of old or new 
friends, family reunions, celebrations, special observances, 
obsequies, etc. When grave complications threaten, and 
diplomacy is invoked, arguments are invariably re-enforced 



GOOD INDIANS. 99 

by a war dance, or a series of dances, in the course of which 
the jarring factions who have met together to investigate 
and settle their differences (peaceably, or by arms,) endeavor 
to impress and intimidate each other by extravagant dis- 
plays of costume, menacing attitudes, hideous noises, 
uncompromising yells, consummate braggadocio, and 
illustrations of prowess and muscular science in pantomime, 
so that peradventure, each other's opponent may weaken 
before he ventures upon hostilities, or at least be timorous 
on the field of battle. The full significance of these 
methods is presumably understood by the present genera- 
tion of natives, though the young men do not appear to be 
well posted in the formula, seeming to regard the whole 
demonstration as a noisy farce ; and it is seldom nowadays 
that young or old can be induced to illustrate the nearly 
obsolete customs of their forefathers, an exhibition of 
which is apparently regarded with some such mixed interest 
as " ye old folks' concerts " of their progressive white 
brethren. However, for a few dollars contributed by 
inquisitive spectators or tourists they can usually be per- 
suaded to do the proper thing, and it has got to be quite 
the fashion, within the past two years, for excursionists to 
drum up some recruits from the Indian " ranche " at Sitka 
to give a war dance, or some other dance, on the parade 
ground, although such improvisations are obviously not as 
striking as the bona-fide demonstrations held at the Chilkat 
potlatch in 1880. The form is to build a huge bonfire in 
the center of the plaza, and after a sufficient time for suita- 
ble preparation, the maskers appear, marching in from the 
Indian quarter through the gate of the old Russian stock- 
ade, in full panoply of buckskin, paint and feathers, 
singing in a wild weird monotone which has a swinging 
cadence or rhythm that is quite infectious, and while the 
glow of the bonfire lights up their painted faces and fantas- 
tic toggery with the lurid tinge of Tophet, all the by- 
standers catch the inspiration and join the chant with sway- 
ing bodies and ever kindling fervor. It is much like the 
regulation Indian dance which most eastern readers have 
witnessed at the " Wild West Show " of Buffalo Bill in 
these later days — chiefly mechanical posturing and posing, 
with wild gestures and much brandishing of weapons — 
only that the Alaska natives do not pass and chassez around 
the fire, but dance in a single row, all on one side, like so 
many jacks-in-the box. Neither their performance nor their 
costumes begin to compare with what I have seen among 
the Mountain Crows and Sioux. Most of them had their 



I oo OUR NEW ALA SKA. 

faces painted red with dashes of black, chiefly on one side, 
and they wore preposterous head-dresses of cotton waste and 
goat horns, and fantastic ornaments that dangled, feathers 
which wabbled, and bits of metal that made a tinkling 
noise. Some wore their blankets, and others more meager 
costumes, with bodies daubed. The women bound their 
silver bracelets about their heads, spread wide open in 
crescent form, like the characters in old mythology, and 
the firelight glistened on their polished points like scintilla- 
tions from the moon ; but a pervading odor, whose origin 
was familiar and unmistakable, added a substantial realism 
to the scene. 

There are, perhaps, thirty thousand Indians in Alaska — 
though this estimate is based solely upon the number of 
tribes or bands known to the trading posts on the coast 
and in the interior ; and they are not only expert in their 
natural gifts of hunting, trapping and fishing, but they are 
splendid navigators and seamen. They would make good 
soldiers, surveyors, coast guards and policemen. They are 
very efficient help in the salmon canneries and oil factories, 
and they make good mill men, miners and agriculturists. 

That Indians will become farmers when it is made worth 
while, is shown in an appendix to General Crook's report, 
whence it appears that during 1885 the White Mountain 
tribes of Arizona had 2,120 acres of land under cultivation, 
raised 80,000 pounds of barley, and 3,500,000 pounds of 
corn. They sold to the government 700,000 pounds of 
hay and thirty-two tons of barley, and had 1,000,000 pounds 
of hay awaiting the quartermaster's order. These Alaskans 
are natural-born carpenters and workers in wood. Some of 
their carving on wood, bone, stone and metal is exquisite, 
and always original and unique. Their permanent nouses 
are one-story and occasionally two-story frame buildings, 
and many of them have two or more windows fitted with 
sash and glass. The women weave beautiful cloth and 
blankets from the fleece of the mountain goat ; they sew 
very deftly, embroider, weave hats, mats and baskets, and 
make fishermen's nets. They also make waterproof cloth- 
ing from the intestines of the moose, bear and sea lion. 
There are also among them regular artificers in metals, 
jewelers, who manufacture the silver rings, bracelets and 
lip ornaments which are so common among themselves. If 
a dollar ever comes into their possession, it is hammered out 
at once into ornaments. It never goes back to the United 
States Treasury. Oh, that all the silver dollars could be 
sent to Alaska ! 



GOOD INDIAN'S. ioi 

There are already growing settlements at Sitka, Wrangell 
and Juneau, with populations aggregating several hundreds, 
and lesser communities elsewhere, at all of which native 
men and women are employed in every sort of out-of-door 
and household capacity, so that their versatility, industry 
and ingenuity have been fully tested. In British Columbia 
the Indians derive a considerable income from their labors 
in various occupations, and it has been declared that but 
for their aid several flourishing industries would cease to 
exist, or, at least, labor under serious disadvantages. The 
inner life of the Alaskan natives is extremely interesting to 
the visitor. There is every encouragement to hope for 
their ultmate absorption into civilization. 

Though temporarily under stress, they can be redeemed 
and rehabilitated. Careful Christian training of the healthy 
children among them, and a conservation of the unblemished 
adults from contamination, will restore their pristine man- 
hood and usefulness. Already the Rev. Sheldon Jack- 
son has established, within two years, an Indian mission at 
Sitka, whose spacious two-story buildings, and surrounding 
premises, with male pupils in gray cloth uniform, are very 
creditable to his efforts, and whose management seems 
equally so to an outsider, although his labors have 
been persistently antagonized by local officials, to whom 
obviously some personal indiscretion or want of tact has 
made him obnoxious. Mr. and Mrs. Young have charge 
of a mission at Wrangell, using the old buildings which 
served as officers' quarters and barracks when Wrangell 
was a "fort." The Haines mission at Chilkoot is very 
flourishing. 

At Tongass a native couple — very nice people indeed, 
who were educated at the Wrangell mission — are teaching 
an Indian school which has an attendance of forty-five 
pupils, the government paying a salary of $500 for their 
work. A number of young Indian men attend the military 
school at Forest Grove, Oregon. A Mrs. Macfarland has 
devoted much of a sojourn of eleven years to charitable 
labor among the girls and young women. 

It is unfortunate that any impediments should be placed 
in the way of this missionary work, by whomsoever done, 
for it must continuously be kept in mind, when considering 
the natives of Alaska, that they are not listless savages, un- 
tutored and wild, but that they constitute a valuable indus- 
trial force in reserve — far superior to negroes or Chinese — 
which is at once available for service whenever new com- 
mercial enterprises are established. Yet it is a deplorable 



102 OUR NEW ALA SKA. 

fact that the missionaries have many adverse influences and 
obstacles to contend with, the chief of which I believe is 
the ambiguous attitude of the general government about 
the Indian question. If Congress would make the natives 
eligible to citizenship by a plan of probationary prepara- 
tion, most of the difficulties which now surround their ad- 
vancement would disappear. As with the schools in the 
East, so in Alaska, there is no provision for graduated pu- 
pils except to return them to their homes, where they 
speedily relapse into the degeneracy and immoralities of 
the old way. In the case of girls, it is easy to perceive that 
those who have been trained at the missions to habits of 
neatness, are all the more desirable. There has been not 
only a lack of sympathy and co-operation with missionary 
work on the part of the local government officials, but the 
Indians themselves are interested only in the immediate 
pecuniary gain to accrue, so that ignorant and unprinci- 
pled parents will often hire their educated daughters out 
for immoral purposes ; and when the women are corrupt, 
what chance is there for the morality of men ? The best 
testimony that can be offered to demonstrate the disposi- 
tion of the Indians to receive the lights, rights, and benefits 
of Christian civilization is contained in the simple appeal 
made by Chief Toy-a-att, at Wrangell, as long ago as 1878, 
to an assemblage of several hundred whites and Indians ; 
and that appeal has not yet been regarded ! Is philanthropy 
a sop to Indian credulity ? Read what follows : — 

" Mv Brothers and Friends : I come before you to- 
day to talk a little, and I hope that you will listen to what 
I say, and not laugh at me because I am an Indian. I am 
getting old and have not many summers yet to live 
on this earth. I want to speak a little of the past 
history of us Sitka Indians and of our present wants. 
In ages past, before white men came among us, the 
Indians of Alaska were barbarous, with brutish instincts. 
Tribal wars were continual, bloodshed and murder of daily 
occurrence, and superstition controlled our whole move- 
ments and our hearts. The white man's God we knew not 
of. Nature showed to us that there was a first great cause : 
beyond that all was blank. Our god was created by us ; 
that is, we selected animals and birds, the images of which 
we revered as gods. 

" Natural instincts taught us to supply our wants from 
that which we beheld around us. If we wanted food, the 
waters gave us fish ; and if we wanted raiment, the wild 



GOOD INDIANS. 103 

animals of the woods gave us skins, which we converted to 
use. Implements of warfare and tools to work with we 
constructed rudely from stone and wood. [Here the 
speaker showed specimens of stone, axes, and weapons of 
warfare.] 

" These," said he, holding them up to view, " we used in 
the place of the saws, axes, hammers, guns and knives of 
the present time. Fire we discovered by friction. [Here 
he demonstrated how they produced fire.] 

" In the course of time a change came over the spirit of 
our dreams. We became aware of the fact that we were 
not the only beings in the shape of man that inhabited this 
earth. White men appeared before us on the surface of the 
great waters in large ships which we called canoes. Where 
they came from we knew not, but supposed that they 
dropped from the clouds. The ship's sails we took for 
wings, and concluded that, like the birds of the air, they 
could fly as well as swim. As time advanced, the white 
men who visited our country introduced among us every 
thing that is produced by nature and the arts of man. They 
also told us of a God, a superior being, who created all 
things, even us the Indians. They told us that this God 
was in the heavens above, and that all mankind were His 
children. These things were told to us, but we could not 
understand them. 

" At the present time we are not the same people that we 
were a hundred years ago. Contact and association with 
the white man have created a change in our habits and cus- 
toms. We have seen and heard of the wonderful works of 
the white man. His ingenuity and skill have produced 
steamships, railroads, telegraphs, and thousands of other 
things. His mind is far-reaching ; whatever he desires he 
produces. His wonderful sciences enable him to under- 
stand nature and her laws. Whatever she produces he im- 
proves upon and makes useful. 

" Each day the white man becomes more perfect in the 
arts and sciences, while the Indian is at a stand-still. Why 
is this ? Is it because the God you have told us of is a white 
God, and that you, being of His color, have been favored 
by Him ? 

" Why, brothers, look at our skin ; we are dark, we are 
not of your color, hence you call us Indians. Is this the 
reason that we are ignorant ; is this the cause of our not 
knowing our Creator ? 

" My brothers, a change is coming. We have seen and 
heard of the wonderful things of this world, and we desire 



1 04 O UR NE W ALA SKA . 

to understand what we see and what we hear. We desire 
light. We want our eyes to become open. We have been 
in the dark too long, and we appeal to you, my brothers, to 
help us. 

" But how can this be done ? Listen to me. Although I 
have been a bad Indian, I can see the right road and I de- 
sire to follow it. I have changed for the better. I have 
done away with all Indian superstitious habits. I am in my 
old age becoming civilized. I have learned to know Jesus 
and I desire to know more of Him. I desire education, in 
order that I may be able to read the Holy Bible. 

" Look at Fort Simpson and at Metlahkahtla, British Col- 
umbia. See the Indians there. In years gone by they 
were the worst Indians on this coast, the most brutal, bar- 
barous, and bloodthirsty. They were our sworn enemies 
and were continually at war with us. How are they now ? 
Instead of our enemies, they are our friends. They have 
become partially educated and civilized. They can under- 
stand what they see and what they hear ; they can read 
and write and are learning to become Christians. These 
Indians, my brothers, at the places just spoken of, are 
British Indians, and it must have been the wish of the Brit- 
ish queen that her Indians should be educated. We have 
been told that the British government is a powerful one, 
and we have also been told that the American government 
is a more powerful one. We have been told that the Presi- 
dent of the United States has control over all the people, 
both whites and Indians. We have been told how he came 
to be our great chief. He purchased this country from 
Russia, and in purchasing it he purchased us. We had no 
choice or say in change of masters. The change has been 
made and we are content. All we ask is justice. 

" We ask of our father at Washington that we be recog- 
nized as a people, inasmuch as he recognizes all other In- 
dians in other portions of the United States. 

" We ask that we be civilized, Christianized and educated. 
Give us a chance, and we will show to the world that we 
can become peaceable citizens and good Christians. An 
effort has already been made to better our condition, and 
may God bless them in their work. A school has been es- 
tablished here which, notwithstanding strong opposition by 
bad white men and by Indians, has done a good and great 
work among us. 

" This is not sufficient. We want our chief at Washington 
to help us. We want him to use his influence toward hav- 
ing us a church built and in having a good man sent to us 



GOOD INDIANS. 107 

who will teach us to read the Bible and learn all about 
Jesus. And now, my brothers, to you I appeal. Help us in 
our efforts to do right. If you don't want to come to our 
church don't laugh and make fun of us because we sing and 
pray. 

" Many of you have Indian women living with you. I ask 
you to send them to school and church, where they will 
learn to become good women. Do'n't, my brothers, let them 
go to the dance-houses, for there they will learn to be bad 
and learn to drink whisky. 

" Now that I see you are getting tired of listening to me, 
I will finish by asking you again to help us in trying to do 
right. If one of us should be led astray from the right path, 
point out to us our error and assist us in trying to re- 
form. If you will all assist us in doing good and quit sell- 
ing whisky, we will soon make Fort Wrangell a quiet place, 
and the Stickeen Indians will become a happy people. I 
now thank you all for your kind attention. Good-by." 



MEDICINE AND MYTHOLOGY 



While cruising in the Alaskan archipelago the voyager 
often discovers, on some lone islet or low-lying point pro- 
jecting from a headland, what appears to be a miniature 
house, half hidden by a luxurious undergrowth. Sometimes 
it is whitewashed and sometimes it is painted in gaudy col- 
ors. Occasionally it has a little window in the side. As a 
rule it is remote from settlement of any kind, and affords 
the only suggestion of human occupation which is seen for 
miles. Only towering mountain peaks, pine-clad and 
snow-capped, and tortuous water channels intervene, 
and there is usually such an absence of animal life, owing 
to the physical formation of angular heights and fathomless 
depths, that even the scream of a gull seldom disturbs 
the solitude. 

The stranger wonders at the apparent preference for 
isolation for any purpose whatsoever ; but, after having been 
duly informed, he learns to take it for granted whenever he 
sees them, that each of these diminutive tenements is the 
mortuary abode of some " Shaman " or Indian magician, 
whose supposed supernatural powers have not availed to 
avert the inevitable grip. Having completed the mortal 
period of his allotment for good or evil, whichever suits his 
individual caprice, he has been summarily shelved, as it 
were, by those who care to have nothing more to do with 
him or his occult dealings. They have swathed his poor 
body in cerements of sail-cloth and mats, covered it with a 
dance blanket, and laid it away like a discarded bundle whose 
usefulness is done. There it will dry into a mummy, or 
molder into decay. Nevertheless, he has been scrupu- 
lously provided for by his credulous subjects, who have care- 
fully placed beside him, within his wooden domicile, all the 
properties and appurtenances of his craft — his magic 
charms, hideous masks, grotesque wooden rattles, fantas- 
tic toggery, and nameless implements, which it is believed 
will serve him in some new embodiment which he is expected 
to assume. Formerly these relics were held in superstitious 
awe by the natives, and even the burial site was shunned. 



MEDICINE AND MYTHOLOGY. 109 

But in these days of modern civilization and vandalism the 
graves are plundered of their contents, not only by ethno- 
logical students and visitors in search of curios, but by the 
natives themselves, whose cupidity has overcome the 
scruples of bygone days of abject barbarism. 

The Shaman,* or medicine man, is an omnipresent living 
conundrum to his unsophisticated people. He is a mystery 
which they can not comprehend, and a terror always, for 
while he is a handy sort of a personage to have in a com- 
munity, and is supposed to have power to heal the sick, he 
is, nevertheless, believed to be in league with the devil. The 
malign influence of his spells is a constant menace, and no 
one can tell when or upon whom it may fall. This is a hard 
reputation to have, but the Shaman promotes it. He is a 
self constituted bugaboo, having duly qualified himself for 
the role by a course of trying ordeals by fire,water, famine and 
direst torture. It is probably his attested ability to survive 
inflictions which in ordinary course would cause death, 
rather than absolute immunity from any physical injury, 
which inspires his people with a superstitious fear. At the 
same time he is himself in constant apprehension of some 
clandestine influence at work to counteract his own. If his 
incantations and mummeries fail of success, he charges the 
failure and its blame to whomever he chooses. Many an 
innocent life has expiated an alleged interference in days 
gone by. Happily, his supremacy is now at an end. His 
sway was incontinently cut short by Capt. Beardslee, in 
1879, when he interposed to prevent the murder of a woman 
who had been accused by a vengeful medicine man of being 
a witch. A witch used to have no more show in Alaska, than 
she did in the days of our disreputable Pilgrim forefathers. 

It is the professional business of the Shaman to scare 
people and to keep them scared. It pays. Whenever he 
wants money, instead of "holding a man up," he shakes 
his rattle at him. One shake will impoverish an ordinary 
Siwash, two will clean him out. It is the same with bodily 
ailments. As a medical practitioner he despises the use ©f 
nostrums, and discards all physic. His method is to frighten 
disease away. When summoned in a case of sickness he rigs 
himself out in a garb that would scare a hobgoblin and in- 
crease the pallor of a ghost. An invalid must be in great 
extremity indeed when he will consent to send for a doctor. 

" Shaman " is the name applied to the sorcerer or magician among the 
Kalmuks and other tribes of Northern Asia, and the word, therefore, adds 
ano^ier evidence to confirm the belief that the Pacific coast tribes have an 
Asiatic origin. 



HO OUR NEW ALA SKA. 

An appointment with a nightmare would not require half 
the nerve. The patient knows just what to expect. He 
has prepared himself to be frightened by a long course of 
mental enervation, and he feels that it is merely a toss-up 
which shall stand the infernal racket the longer himself or 
the ailment. In fact if he should fail to be frightened at all, 
the enchantment is kultus — no good — and the doctor with- 
draws, a mortified and disgruntled Shaman. 

Such dilemma is alarming, but the medicine man is pre- 
pared to wrestle with it. He at once dons a frightful head- 
gear of mountain-goat horns, with a mask of hideous device ; 
and down his naked spine a row of horns, jet black and 
polished, extends in abnormal development to the very 
base. Long pendants made of dried skunk-skins and as- 
sorted intestines dangle from his head, armlets and 
anklets equally repulsive encircle his shriveled limbs, 
and his whole body glows with ocher of green, yellow 
and red. Armed with a huge wooden rattle, fash- 
ioned in the form of a stork, with a demon carved on 
its back pulling out a man's tongue with its teeth, or some 
other collateral symbol still more repulsive, and carrying a 
long mystic rod or wand in his hand, he advances into the 
room with a series of postures and jerks, which impressively 
emphasize his aggressiveness, overpowering the patient and 
leaving him limp and paralyzed with terror. If, however, 
the disease should prove recalcitrant, the Shaman seats him- 
self on the earth in the center of the room with his back 
to the fire, and proceeds to beat the ground with his stick, 
shaking his rattle and singing with all his might. He seems 
in dead earnest, and, if there is any thing in the logic of 
sympathy, the patient ought to get well instanter. But death 
too often plays the stronger hand, carrying off the victim 
and the malady together, much to the disgust of the doctor, 
who is very apt to make some outsider the scapegoat of his 
bad luck. Quite likely he marvels that men should die at 
all, and it must be even a greater surprise to him when he is 
called to shuffle off his own mortal coil ; for a magician so 
capable to heal, and to forefend death, would be likely to 
suppose himself exempt from the common fate. But the 
inevitable end comes, and, in view of his peculiar relation- 
ship as middleman between mortality and the devil, it is 
little wonder that he is buried apart from his people, and 
that the site of his grave is shunned. In something of the 
strain sung of an abdicated monarch, 

He sleeps his last sleep, he has sprung his last rattle, 
No call can awake him to mischief again. 



MEDICINE A ND M YTHOL OGY. Ill 

On the Alaska coast the reputable dead are usually- 
cremated, and the bones collected into a box and preserved. 
The calcined remains are carefully placed in miniature 
houses like the Shaman's ; but, instead of being isolated from 
each other, the houses are grouped in a common cemetery, 
as in civilized communities. The sites are chosen with 
respect to picturesque attraction on grassy islands, shapely 
ridges of land, and curves of the shore. On a burial island 
near Metlahkahtla the Indians have fashioned a number of 
fir trees into very artistic patterns. At Sitka there is a long 
ridge lined with several score of these mortuary receptacles 
painted in gaudy colors and arranged in parallel rows, inter- 
spersed with fanciful totem poles in quaint devices, on the 
apex of each one of which is a bear, a raven, or an eagle, 
denoting the clan to which the deceased belonged. These 
houses are seldom more than five or six feet cube, with a 
pyramidal roof, sometimes surmounted by a carved image, 
and are very creditable bits of architecture, considering that 
the boards have been split with an ax and smoothed with 
an adze. There are cemeteries elsewhere which are 
inclosed with neat whitewashed palings, and you often see 
small jackstaffs with pennants of white and colored cotton 
cloth standing by the graves. This is where the method of 
interment has been adopted from the whites, the bodies 
being placed in the earth and carved slabs set up in lieu of 
headstones. There are no less than four other modes of 
sepulture in Alaska, namely, burial in tents and in canoes 
raised on staddles out of reach of animals, burial in trees, 
aquatic burial beneath the waves, and in canoes turned 
adrift. 

Tree-burial is more in vogue in the interior than on the 
coast, a dry goods box, shoe box, or even a cask obtained 
from some trader, being a good enough coffin for the 
defunct remains. One of these improvised burial caskets, 
which I saw in the forks of a tree, retained the original 
manufacturer's mark [D W] in the customary place of the 
coffin plate, an inscription which might have been appro- 
priately translated to mean "dead weight." 

With so many various methods in vogue in the same 
region, one hesitates to lay as much stress as some ethnolo- 
gists do upon the assumed significance of mortuary rites 
and burial as indicating the religious belief of those who 
practice them. It depends much upon circumstances and 
present convenience, as well as the liability to subsequent 
disturbance, how Indians, or any other people, bury their 
dead. However, it may be said with regard to cremation, 



112 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

which has long been the popular form in Alaska, that the 
natives believe that the souls of those who are cremated 
turn into ravens. The raven is consequently a sacred bird 
all over the country, and is never molested. He is known 
as " tillikum " (friend), and it is considered a good omen 
when one of the dismal creatures is in attendance at a 
cremation. 

In Sitka, ravens are as numerous as buzzards are in some 
Southern cities, so that the natives have no lack of family 
associations. One would think they were dead heroes, sure 
enough, or " hyas-tyees," from the way in which they strut 
about the place, and the independent airs they assume ; 
yet it is not obvious at first thought what especial advantage 
there may be to the evicted spirits in securing the embodi- 
ment of this ill-favored bird. What becomes of the souls of 
those who are not cremated does not appear. Doubtless 
they abide in that intangible middle ground which only a 
few mortals have ever been permitted to explore. Two 
years ago the Indian " ranche " at Sitka was in a chronic state 
of disquietude because of a ghost with teeth three inches 
long, which was said to have been seen along the Indian 
river, and many were willing to offer a hundred blankets to 
anyone who would capture this terrible ghost, which was 
believed to be that of an Indian lately drowned there, who 
belonged to another tribe, and whose body was not crema- 
ted but buried. A dead slave is not considered worthy of 
any ceremony whatever, the corpse often being thrown into 
the sea. There was a death and obsequies when I was in 
Sitka, and I walked one morning down to the end of the 
Indian " ranche, " as it is called, which constitutes the out- 
skirts of every white settlement on the coast, to examine the 
remains of the funeral pile where the cremation had taken 
place. I found nothing but a small quantity of charred 
coals. The unconsumed brands had all been carefully car- 
ried away, while the bones of the corpse had been picked 
out and wrapped in a mat and laid away in a dead-house. 
Some of these houses have compartments, and are the 
receptacles of as many as a dozen separate bundles of bones. 

There is very little ceremony now at a cremation, but in 
earlier times a bereaved widow was subjected to a good deal 
of cruelty, being repeatedly thrown upon the pyre by sym- 
pathizing friends or demonstrative mourners, and seldom 
escaping without serious burns. Very few had courage to 
inflict the sacrificial torture upon themselves. Other near 
relatives displayed their sincerity of grief by various bar- 
barous mutilations. 



MEDICINE AND MYTHOLOGY. 1 15 

Previous to the cremation there is a good deal of formality 
at the house of mourning. In 9 Alaskan houses a dais or plat- 
form runs around the four sides of the interior, which is a 
single compartment or reception room, opening into small 
staterooms on the side opposite the entrance. A brick or 
flagged hearth occupies the center of the quadrangle, the 
smoke from the fire escaping through a flat cupola in the 
roof, there being no chimneys. Four totem poles of fantas- 
tic carving, and color, showing the genealogy of the de- 
ceased and the clan to which he belonged, are set up at the 
four corners of the court. They are kept covered while the 
body sits in state, for the dead Indian is not laid out on a 
bier, but is set up on the dais opposite the entrance, with 
his face painted red, a fanciful crown on his head, and a 
blanket over his shoulders, as if living. The wall behind 
him is appropriately draped and sometimes festooned with 
small American flags. 

On the evening of the day before the funeral the totem 
poles are uncovered and the wailing begins. The whole 
space between the dais and the central fire is crowded with 
mourners of both sexes, clad in their best blankets, who beat 
the ground with sticks in time with a doleful chant. This 
lugubrious singing and shaking of rattles and beating of 
the floor with long staffs is kept up all night. When the 
hour of cremation comes the body is hoisted out through the 
roof and carried to the funeral pile. A corpse is never taken 
out of the door of a house. It would be " bad medicine," 
and defile the temple. Some tribes of Indians burn the 
bark or skin lodge whose inmate dies therein, or they set up 
the lodge apart from habitations and place the dead body in 
it, occupying it no more as a dwelling. But this practice 
would be expensive where the houses are substantial and 
hard to build, as is the case with most of the winter resi- 
dences in Alaska. As a matter of belief a house in which 
an Indian dies is defiled, and this notion is as old as the 
Mosaic Law, for proof of which see Old Testament, book 
of Numbers, Chap. XIX., verse 14. 

The funeral pile is made of resinous spruce poles of the 
proper length, built up in cob-house fashion, with fat pine 
sticks placed inside of the crib, on which the body is laid 
wrapped in its blanket. Logs are then added above the 
body, crossing other logs at the corners, and then the whole 
is set on fire. An intense heat and conflagration results, 
and a few of the Indians remain to keep the fire alive with 
their long poles, while a bevy of sad women contemplate the 
ghastly procedure from their seats on the grass not far 



1 1 6 UR NE W ALASKA. 

away. When every thing is consumed the relations will cull 
out the whitened bones and level the ashes decorously. 
There is no odor, and everything is done silently, decently, 
and in order. 

It is customary to place the dead man's property beside 
the bundle of bones, which represents all that he was cor- 
poreally, and occasionally his canoe is drawn up beside the 
tomb, allegorically to continue the voyage of life, but in 
fact to remain until it falls to decay. Of late years inquisi- 
tive visitors, as well as avaricious vandals, have robbed the 
dead houses of all their contents, and even despoiled them 
of their bones. The canoes have been cut up or stolen, and 
the sepulchers otherwise shamefully desecrated. Grass and 
weeds have grown up inside to their very roofs, and if a 
chance stranger attempts to explore the violated precincts, 
he finds a satisfactory inspection prevented by an almost 
impenetrable jungle of undergrowth. And all this neglect 
and disorder is done and suffered at the capital of the ter- 
ritory, and there seems to be no official authority to interdict 
or protest. 

Some writers on Alaska topics who aim to be sensational, 
are very fond of printing in their books engravings of 
totem poles and idols, and obsolete things which the young 
natives of the present generation regard with much the same 
interest that we do the calashes and warming pans of our 
grandmothers, or the " one horse shay," and credulous 
readers are apt to infer therefrom that the religious condi- 
tion of the people is but one remove from heathenism, 
whereas it is not impossible to find Christianity in some 
localities nurtured and propagated exclusively by native 
efforts. We who took umbrage at the travesties of Charles 
Dickens ought not to underrate or misrepresent the poor 
Siwash. For myself, I prefer to write in behalf of an 
" improved order of red men," quite content to leave the 
archaeology and mythology of Alaska to the antiquarians. 
Doubtless there is a sort of morbid interest in tracing out 
the hieroglyphs upon a T'linket dance-blanket, and an 
enthusiast may even fancy that he has unraveled some 
pious analogies from their mystic woof, but he who is accus- 
tomed to read the heroics of the red men of the plains as 
they are pictured on the rocks and sketched with pigments 
on their robes, and shields, and tepees, will find in the 
T'linket blanket but a simple analogue and repetition of 
the oft-told story of vaunted prowess ; or perhaps a shad- 
owy suggestion of some familiar thoughts or objects or 
practices like those we see on the bronzes, fans, and screens 



MEDICINE AND MYTHOLOG Y. 117 

of Japan and China. But there is not enough dust of an- 
tiquity between the blanket-folds to blind the ingenuous 
searcher after knowledge. Doubtless some progressive 
savage in these modern days has traced our spiritual lineage 
in the patterns of our Wedgewood ware, and discovered rev- 
elations of deepest human import in our Holland delf. 
Students of composite zoology may amuse themselves by 
the day, or month, in deciphering the intricacies of the em- 
blazoned totem poles ; and some of the most pedantic will 
point out to you the " all seeing eye," the " thunder-bird," 
identical with the Aztec " bird of the sun," and the " light- 
ning-fish," which simple natives, it is said, believe to be the 
authors of those profound phenomena of the air. Yet is it 
more absurd to attribute the noise of thunder to the cleav- 
ing wings of a supposititious bird, or the lightning-flash to 
the darting fish which stirs the phosphorescence of the sea, 
than it is to explain the sound of thunder as being caused 
by the swif* passage of the electrical bolt ? Verily, the sub- 
limity of ignorance is as profound as the depth of wisdom. 
To the untutored savage mind the structural idea of swift- 
ness, courage, strength, and brain, and all the mental and 
physical attributes of man and divinity, are best expressed 
and comprehended through external objects which he makes 
symbolical. Their modes of thought, and the notions they 
have respecting departed spirits, are illustrated in their rude 
way. The natives of Alaska have thought that the crows 
control the eruptions of volcanoes, and that they have 
power over the Spirit of Evil which incites them. They 
believe in transmigration, and in the supernatural powers of 
the bear and raven, which are prominent on all their insig- 
nia. Probably the essence of their religious belief is out- 
lined in the following legend connected with Mt. Edgecumbe, 
once an active volcano, which is told by Lieutenant C. E. S. 
Wood, in one of the back issues of the Century Magazine. 
The story runs : " A long time ago the earth sank beneath 
the water, and the water rose and covered the highest places, 
so that no man could live. It rained so hard that it was as 
if the sea fell from the sky. All was black, and it became 
so dark, that no man knew another. Then a few people 
ran here and there and made a raft of cedar logs ; but noth- 
ing could stand against the white waves, and the raft was 
broken in two. 

" On one part floated the ancestors of the T'linkits ; on 
the other, the parents of all other nations. The waters tore 
them apart, and they never saw each other again. Now 
their children are all different, and do not understand each 



lis OUR NEW ALASKA. 

other. In the black tempest, Chethl was torn from his 
sister Ah-gish-ahn-ahkon [The-woman-who-supports-the- 
earth]. Chethl [symbolized in the ospreyj called aloud to 
her, ' You will never see me again ; but you will hear my 
voice forever ! ' Then he became an enormous bird, and 
flew to southwest, till no eye could follow him. Ah-gish- 
ahn-ahkon climbed above the waters, and reached the sum- 
mit of Edgecumbe. The mountain opened, and received 
her into the bosom of the earth. That hole [the crater] is 
where she went down. Ever since that time she has held 
the earth above the water. The earth is shaped like the 
back of a turtle, and rests on a pillar ; Ah-gish-ahn-ahkon 
holds the pillar. Evil spirits that wish to destroy mankind 
seek to overthrow her and drive her away. The terrible 
battles are long and fierce in the lower darkness. Often the 
pillar rocks and sways in the struggle, and the earth trem- 
bles and seems like to fall ; but Ah-gish-ahn-ahkon is good 
and strong, so the earth is safe. 

" Chethl lives in the bird Kunna-Kaht-eth ; his nest is in 
the top of the mountain, in the hole through which his sis- 
ter disappeared. 

" He carries whales in his claws to this eyrie, and there 
devours them. He swoops from his hiding-place, and rides 
on the edge of the coming storm. The roaring of the 
tempest is his voice calling to his sister. He claps his wings 
in the peals of thunder, and its rumbling is the rustling of 
his pinions. The lightning is the flashing of his eyes." 

Even the whites have acquired some of the Indian super- 
stitions. There are credulous people who believe that croc- 
odiles once inhabited Alaska because a wooden nondescript 
exists which somewhat resembles one. So also because the 
snake is a favorite pattern for bracelets, they believe that 
snakes once existed in the land, when, forsooth, the first 
design was furnished by a chance visitor to a native silver- 
smith who began to manufacture them ; and when a San 
Francisco sharp discovered how great the demand was for 
them he sent seventy dozen pairs of California workman- 
ship to a trusty Siwash at Sitka on commission. Verily, 
when science overleaps itself, the tumble is precipitate. I 
do not take much stock in the mythological significance of 
the multifarious devices which are inseparable from Alaskan 
handiwork. Some of them are obviously the crude expres- 
sions of their primitive theology, but for the rest, they are 
the mere outcroppings of a genius of deformity, fable and 
incongruity, which is their inherent propensity. These 
natives are born caricaturists, manifesting their broad 



MEDICINE AND MYTHOLOGY. 



119 



humor in every thing they do, or make, or say, so that all 
their domestic utensils, their ornaments and interior deco- 
rations, their boats and paddles, toys, dolls, masks, attire, 
and even their family escutcheons, are often of the most 
grotesque character. The images which they make are not 
all idols, nor worshipful. As for their religious zeal as 
Christian proselytes, it is related that some wicked wags 
induced the converted Indians of Sitka to demand a 
" potlatch " of 100 blankets from two Hebrew traders 
because, it had been told them, they had killed their 
" tillikum," the Christ ! 




^>Sii?? 



INDIAN GRAVE. 



ALASKA'S MINERAL WEALTH. 



I suppose that mining in Alaska is much like mining any- 
where else ; processes are similar and familiar. The most 
interesting part of the business is that it is an established 
fact. The mines and the miners are there ; and while the 
incredulous are questioning even their existence, the indus- 
trious and hopeful are busily engaged in taking out the gold. 
There is no doubt that in the early days of discovery and 
prospecting there was more swindling to the square inch 
than in any other known location, but swindling was made 
easy because the " stuff " was there, the indications were 
there, and pay-dirt and bonanza-quartz were there. Officers 
of the army and navy who were on the station were the 
principal investors and chief sufferers, because nobody else 
had any ready cash. These confiding and intelligent 
gentlemen, who were on the spot and took the pains to 
examine for themselves, making interminable tramps 
through the wilderness to visit quartz ledges and placer 
diggings, eagerly " blew in " all they could spare each pay 
day, on the faith of their own investigations. I know one 
officer who has no less than $2,500 so placed, and I believe 
it is well invested, inasmuch as it is judiciously distributed. 
Want of capital and mechanical appliances have made 
investments unremunerative, but not worthless. As soon 
as ever capital was forthcoming the mines were developed 
with profits more than remunerative. The largest stamp- 
mill in the world has now been in active operation there for 
nearly a year. It is located on Douglas Island, opposite 
Juneau, and carries one hundred and twenty stamps, 
working the whole year round. It is owned by San Fran- 
cisco parties. The ore comes right out of the side of the 
mountain (which rises abruptly from the ocean) and is shot 
down an inclined plane to the stamp-mill, where it is treated ; 
and vessels drawing twenty feet of water can lie right along- 
side the rocks of the natural shore and receive their freight 
not a hundred yards from the mill. The primitive forest 
clothes the slopes of the mountain from base to summit, and 
fuel is all around in intimate proximity. No plant of such 



ALASKA' S MINERAL WEALTH. 121 

value was ever erected or operated at so cheap a cost. It 
is said the outlay was half a million dollars, and that 
$16,000,000 have been refused for the property. It is a low- 
grade ore, yielding $5 to $100 per ton of quartz. No stock 
is for sale. The first gold-brick came out in July, 1885, and 
weighed 297 ounces. In August the output was equal to 
$60,000, and the mill is now reported to be running up to 
$100,000 per month, with improving prospects. It is said 
that Senator Jones of Nevada, who is one of its principal 
stockholders, is adding $250,000 a year to his income from 
its output. Right alongside of this mine, in continuation 
of the same ledge or formation, is the Treadwell claim, 
also owned largely by San Francisco parties, which is found 
to be equally rich in ore. Its shares are at a very high 
premium, although the mine is not developed. This year 
machinery will probably be set up by its owners on a scale 
equal to the Douglas plant. Other new and valuable dis- 
coveries have been made on Douglas Island the past winter. 
At Willoughby Island in Cross Sound, at the " North Star " 
ledge near Juneau, and at Kilisnoo, there are said to be 
rich deposits of ore, and many shares have been put on the 
market. These insulated properties so far pan out the best. 

On the mainland, just across the channel from Douglas 
Island, and six miles back from the shore, in the heart 
of the mountains, is " Silver Bow Basin," where there 
are stores, blacksmith shops, boarding houses and tenements 
for a large community engaged in placer mining, who turn 
out $20,000 bullion every month from May to October. 
The estimated yield for 1884 was $120,000. I am not 
aware that it was greater for 1885. The altitude of 
the basin, which is just above timber line, is so 
high that the winters are very long. The lower mountains, 
however, are ordinarily clear enough of snow for prospect- 
ing in April. Here are scores of sluices, expensive viaducts 
and hydraulic apparatus, " rasters," hose, pans, and iron 
conduits ten inches in diameter, in place, all over the basin 
and up the sides of the inclosing mountains to the very 
snow line. Several tunnels have been driven into the quartz 
ledges, which yield a fair supply of gold. Claims have been 
staked out everywhere. Lead of the richest kind is found 
in big nuggets, as well as gold. I have myself broken open 
large chunks of quartz which seemed to promise nothing, 
and been surprised at the richness of their revelations. 

An arastra is a queer cheap machine for treating ore 
which can be used to great advantage when the quartz is 
decomposed and soft. It is a sort of circular tub twenty 



122 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

feet in diameter and four feet high, with a hard stone floor 
and an upright shaft in the center, which carries four arms, 
like a clothes drier. At the ends of these arms heavy fiat 
blocks of stone are attached by chains, and as the arms 
swing round they drag the stones over the bottom of the 
tub and pulverize the quartz, which is fed into it with a due 
proportion of quicksilver and such chemicals as the nature 
of the ore may require. The machine is driven by a simple 
water wheel attached to the same shaft ; a sluice placed a 
few inches above the floor lets off the waste water, the pre- 
cious metal uniting with the quicksilver and settling to the 
bottom of the tub. There are two of these contrivances in 
the Silver Bow Basin. 

These mines have made Juneau quite the center of busi- 
ness in South-eastern Alaska. There are possibly three 
hundred white people in the town, which is most romanti- 
cally situated at the base of a mountain just in front of the 
entrance of a canon through which a beautiful stream flows 
in a series of cascades and perpendicular leaps to the sea. 
The store of the North-west Trading Company is conspicu- 
ous among others, but there are good restaurants, two drug 
stores and several general stores, a beer brewery, two barber 
shops with hot and cold baths, a jeweler's shop, blacksmith 
shops, post-office and some very snug dwellings, nearly all 
of which are painted and look neat. Some nouses have 
little gardens inclosed. A display of flags from three or 
four tall staffs shows prettily against the somber background 
of evergreens, and makes the place look gay. There is a 
commodious wharf and warehouse for the steamer, and 
usually two or three small sailing craft and numberless 
canoes enliven the little bight within whose curve the town 
is principally built. But there is besides a picturesque prom- 
ontory at one point of the arc, with cottages climbing the 
slope among the trees. A ferryboat runs hourly to Douglas 
Island. Two Indian villages flank the town on either end, 
with a combined population of twelve hundred or more in 
the winter time ; in summer their men are chiefly employed 
at the mines, but there is always a goodly number of them on 
hand to handle freight when the steamer arrives. Many of 
them earn $2.50 per day at the mines, and, although there are 
a few Chinese at work in the basin, these are preferred, being 
generally larger and much stronger and better able to 
handle heavy tools and big loads. Tradesmen earn from 
$4 to $10 per day, but continuous employment is uncertain. 
There is a beaten trail over the mountain, made at a con- 
siderable cost, and the Indians have carried over it on their 



ALA SKA ' S MINER A L WE A LTH. 123 

backs every thing whatsoever that has gone to the mines. 
This service they perform at the uniform rate of one cent 
per pound. 

The first attorney's fees ever paid in Alaska were to Dis- 
trict Attorney Haskett, in gold dust, from this " basin." 
Last year I went up to the mines in company with him and 
his chief partner, Mr. Powers, who had large claims there, 
and now by strange fatalities both are dead. 

About sixty miles from Juneau is the Chilkat country, 
which Captain Beardslee succeeded in opening to miners in 
1880 through the instrumentality of a prominent chief 
named " Sitka Jack," whom he sent into the interior 
as plenipotentiary, arrayed in all the self-sufficiency 
and authority of a blue frock-coat, brass buttons, a 
colonel's stripes, a navy cap with gold band and 
device, and, I believe, a sword. He remained all 
winter dispensing good cheer liberally from village to vil- 
lage, and when he returned in the spring, the up-country 
natives said it was " all right ; the white people might 
come;" whereupon, in 1881, a schooner immediately out- 
fitted at Sitka to start for Chilkat. Jack lives at Sitka in 
one of the best houses in the " ranche," white-painted, with 
windows, green blinds, porch and veranda, and it is said he 
is worth $10,000. He is industrious and shrewd, and be- 
sides working in the canneries, picks up a good deal of 
money in " little odd jobs." One summer he made $300 
in the cannery alone. From Lynn Channel and Chilkoot 
Inlet, 120 miles northeast of Sitka, there are four passes over 
the mountains to a chain of lakes 150 miles long, which form 
the head waters of the Yukon ; the best of which passes, 25 
miles in length, was selected by Lieutenant Schwatka for his 
exploring tour, already referred to in this volume. Valu- 
able mineral discoveries have been made on the banks of 
the river, and I have reliable information that one miner 
has staked out a claim on a vein of gold-bearing quartz six 
hundred feet wide. In his report, Lieutenant Schwatka says: 

" The d'Abbadie, [a tributary river of the upper Yukon] 
is important in an economical sense as marking the point at 
which gold in placer deposits commences. From here on, 
nearly to the mouth or mouths of the great Yukon, a panful 
of dirt taken from almost any bar or bank with any discre- 
tion, will give several ' colors,' in miners' parlance." 

This gold has been ground out of the far away mountains 
by the rasping glaciers, and deposited with the gray glacier 
mud which is brought down by the streams from the ice 
fields. It is probable that all the environment of the mount- 



124 O UR NE W ALA SKA . 

ains which inclose the great central plateau of the Yukon 
is rich in minerals. Schwatka mentions having discovered 
a party of American miners already at work on the Stewart 
River, where they had found good prospects ; and since 
the spring of 1886 opened several hundred miners and 
prospectors have found their way across the Chilkat trail 
to the diggings, which seem to grow richer the more they 
are developed. 

The mines about Sitka, valuable and innumerable as 
they are, have remained unproductive until the present 
year, but now the richest gold claims yet discovered are 
being systematically developed by a company competent in 
all respects, which was incorporated in November, 1885, 
under the laws of Wisconsin. It is called the " Lake 
Mountain Mining Company," and its president is C. A. 
Swineford, brother of the present governor of Alaska. B. 
K. Bowles, of Baraboo, is secretary, and M. C. Clarke, 
cashier of the First National Bank of Madison, treasurer. 
Nicolas Haley, the old pioneer prospector of Alaska, is a 
large stockholder.* The company has abundant capital, 
and began work early last February with all requisite tools 
for engineering, mining, assaying, etc. In May they had 
begun working the placers, and had erected wharves and 
warehouses at the head of Silver Bay, some four miles dis- 
tant from Sitka, on Baronoff Island. They had also driven 
a tunnel into the quartz ledge with a view to the early 
erection of a stamp-mill, to be operated at the earliest day 
possible. The property of the company comprises several 
of the most valuable of the Haley claims, from one of which 
this indefatigable miner obtained an ounce of gold daily for 
a long period, by simply crushing the decomposed quartz 
in a mortar, treating it with mercury. These claims are 
respectively known as the Lucky Chance, Porphyry, Cleve- 
land and Nickel lodes, and the Haley & Sons Placer. 

* :: * " Nicholas Haley, a practical miner, has been about the best slan- 
dered man in this vicinity. He had up-hill work to obtain credence to 
his tales as to the richness of Alaska in gold. It was, I remember, fully 
explained to me in San Francisco, that Haley was a fraud ; that ore from 
other regions was brought up here and mines salted, so as to make a 
rush which would benefit the ring of which Haley was ringleader, and 
with a fortune at his control. The man has struggled on in poverty, 
persevering, and at last his upward turn has come. Within a month lie 
has sold to San Francisco parties, who at last came up to examine, over 
seventy thousand dollars worth of ledges, and still owns enough to keep 
him rich. If, as I believe they will, the mineralogical resources of 
Alaska bring her into prosperity a^nin, its citizens should always do 
honor to this miner to whom they will owe it." — \Capt. L. A. Beards- 
lee in Forest and Stream. 



ALA SKA'S MINERAL WEAL TH 127 

Official assays of specimens of quartz taken at random 
therefrom show from $147.60 to $1,840 per ton. 

Captain Beardslee, U. S. N., who was on the Alaska station 
during the years i879-'82, has given a complete history of 
mining operations in the vicinity of Sitka during the Rus- 
sian occupation, and up to the year 1880. Its publication was 
commenced in the Forest and Stream in 1879, while I was 
its editor, and continued throughout the year following. 

It seems that reports of mineral and marble discov- 
eries were long ago brought in from time to time by 
the Indian fur hunters, but very little attention was 
paid to them until the year 1855, when the Russian gov- 
ernment sent an engineer officer to examine and investi- 
gate into the mineral resources of the country. Although 
he was ostensibly engaged in this duty for a period of two 
years, the report is current that he put in the best part of 
his time at Sitka in " potlatch " and dancing ; and as he 
never visited the range of mountains on which are situated 
nearly all of the ledges which have since been discovered, 
his report was unfavorable ; and from that date until the 
transfer of the territory to the United States, nothing was 
done. In fact, the Russians were after fur, and not gold. 
The fur company itself was especially lukewarm toward 
prospectors and explorers ; because, by the terms of their 
contract, the government had a right to take away from 
them the control of any lands in which mineral deposits 
were found. 

The first discovery of gold in the vicinity of Sitka was made 
by a soldier named Doyle, in 1871. In 1872 stringers of 
quartz were found at Indian River, one mile from town, and 
in the mountains, back of Silver Bay, ten miles from town, 
and the " Haley & Milletich ledge," the " Bear ledge," and 
the " Upper ledge " successively came to light. On De- 
cember 9 of that year, the first blast ever made in Alaska 
quartz was exploded, and from the rock thrown out and 
broken up by it, about sixty dollars worth of free gold was 
obtained. On Christmas day the " Stewart ledge " was 
discovered. The next year, in 1873, two mining companies 
were formed of army officers and citizens of Sitka. In 
1877 the "Lower ledge" passed into the hands of San 
Francisco people, who organized the Baronoff Island Gold 
and Silver Mining Company. Sitka is situated on 
Baronoff Island. This company watered the stock so 
that outsiders declined to invest, although a shaft, 
which is down sixty feet, is in good ore all the way. In 
1876 the Stewart passed into the hands of Portland men, 



128 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

under the name of the Alaska Gold and Silver Mining 
Company. This mine has been mismanaged. Neverthe- 
less, it possesses a steam ten-stamp mill, shops, cabins, 
and full outfit. A tunnel is in over 160 feet, in good ore 
all the way. Another, ioo feet above it, is in eighty-four 
feet, and another was about being started in the month of 
February, 1880, at which date the output of eleven days' 
work was about $1,800 worth of bullion, with over fourteen 
pounds of amalgam produced from free gold alone, ready 
for shipment. These statements I gather from Captain 
Beardslee's report of 1880, and I am not aware that any 
thing has been done in that vicinity since then. Other ledges 
discovered at sundry times on the same range, are known 
as the " Haley & Francis," " Wicket Fall," and " Great East- 
ern; " and there are more still, further east. Assays of the 
" Great Eastern," by Selby & Co. of San Francisco, yielded 
$175 gold and $5.20 silver per ton in 1879. These speci- 
mens came from the surface, and showed no free gold 
whatever. Haley claims are found all over the country, 
one of which is said to have yielded him $20,000 in five 
years " arastra " work ; but there are lots of " holes " said 
to be valuable, which are utterly worthless, and always were. 

In the enumeration of mining enterprises, I should add 
that the Mexican Gold and Silver Mining Company, and 
the Admiralty Gold and Silver Mining Company each 
with $10,000,000 capital stock, and each with J. D. Fry, 
T. J. Hay, James Treadwell and C. F. Stone as directors, 
were recently organized at San Francisco ; the former for 
the development of valuable claims in the great gold belt 
of Douglas Island, the latter for ledges on Admiralty 
Island. These companies are preparing to get to work 
this summer. 

Time was, in the days of the Frazer River gold fever, 
when miners fitted out at Wrangell and followed up the 
Stickeen River, through a defile of the Alaska mountains 
into the British territory beyond, where the diggings were. 
Wrangell had a population of three thousand people then, 
and could not accommodate them all. So, when the houses 
were filled, old hulks of vessels were converted into hotels 
and lodgings, and these still remain, high and dry on the 
shelving shore, but gradually falling to decay, like a majority 
of the houses in this at present almost deserted town. 
Perhaps in some not distant day the mines will once more 
pan out rich and general business revive, though, of course, 
there is a quantity of quartz holes scattered all over the 
country which are, in the native vernacular, " kultus " (no 



A LA SKA ' S MINERAL WEAL TH. 129 

good). To conclude : Alaska is a fascinating field for 
prospectors. One can find there a "show" of every thing 
he wants — gold, silver, iron, cinnabar, copper, marble, coal, 
and great red garnets as big as hickory nuts ; but the 
results do not always realize the promise, and the reason 
presumably is a lack of capital necessary to develop them. 
Marble crops out all over the country through which the 
coastwise steamer regularly passes. Alex. Choquette, of 
Wrangell, has some very fine specimens of mottled white 
and blue marble from a quarry quite convenient to tide- 
water ; a good quality of white marble is found on Lynn 
Canal. Valuable coal discoveries have been made near 
Kilisnoo, and Mr. C. C. Bartlett, a leading merchant of 
Port Townsend, Washington Territory, has found excellent 
coal on Admiralty Island. Capt. Nichols, of the U. S. 
steamer Pinta, claims to have found a valuable mine of 
bituminous coal. There is no discouragement in the out- 
look. Time will prove it. After the mineral discoveries at 
Vermillion Lake in Minnesota, it took twenty years to con- 
vince people that the ore would pay for working, but when 
a certain iron company found nerve to quietly undertake the 
business it cleared up 63,000 tons the first year and 226,000 
the next. All that is needed in Alaska is capital. 

Coal mining is an industry which in nine years has under- 
gone a wonderful development in British Columbia. Coal 
has been found widely distributed over the mainland and 
islands on Vancouver and Queen Charlotte Islands well to 
the north, at which last named place the only vein of 
anthracite yet discovered on the Pacific coast has been 
found. As the geological structure of Alaska is similar to 
that of the country adjacent, why may not like deposits 
exist in each ! The gold mines of Alaska are far richer 
than those of Cariboo and Cassiar, in British Columbia, of 
which the output of Douglas Island is a full assurance. 
At present the mining laws are satisfactory. (See Organic 
Act, in Appendix.) Captain Beardslee speaks with high 
approval of the good behavior of the miners of Alaska, even 
in the idle days of winter. " They not only conducted them- 
selves in the most respectable manner, but have given their 
willing co-operation in carrying out such simple laws as we 
have found it advisable to establish from time to time." 
This testimony applied to the days before there was any 
civil government. I certainly found the Silver Bow miners 
a most orderly community, among whom no stronger bever- 
age was current than the wholesome beer of the country, 
manufactured at Juneau. 



COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 



It has been my good fortune to enjoy unusual opportun- 
ities to investigate the inland and salt water fishes of Alaska, 
having coasted along a thousand miles of the shore line and 
visited nearly all of its fishing stations in company with pro- 
fessional fishermen, familiar with the Pacific coast. Knowl- 
edge of the habitat of deep-sea fish can only be obtained 
by feeling the bottom with repeated and laborious soundings, 
aided by that intuition which enables an experienced person 
to determine where they are by the color of the water and 
the configuration of the land. Codfish and some other 
species can be traced in part by following the bait fish upon 
which they feed and which appear upon the surface and in 
the bays and estuaries at certain seasons. Seafowls, seals 
and humpbacked whales are of great assistance to the investi- 
gator — indicating by their own presence the presence of the 
fish. Humpbacked whales and porpoises are often seen in 
large numbers in the land-locked waters of the Alaskan 
archipelago, sporting and spouting in basins so small that 
they seem hardly more than lakelets ; and it is proper at 
once to remind the reader that the entire mainland of our 
new possession is flanked by an outlying chain of islands, 
chiefly mountainous, with shores which drop abruptly into 
deep water ; and that there are few open-water reaches for 
a distance of fifteen hundred miles that are exposed to the 
full force of the ocean swell and the breakers. 

From all indications I am convinced that someday in the 
near future the fisheries of Alaska will occupy as important 
a commercial place as those of Norway and the Hebrides 
and the North Atlantic. Already the canning of salmon 
has become an industry of considerable importance, and 
establishments have been located at all the principal points 
as far north as Sitka and considerably beyond, the proprie- 
tors preferring the services of the native Indians to those of 
the irrepressible Chinese — the favorable difference between 
the two races compensating for the many obvious inconven- 
iences of a location so remote from a market. 

An evidence of the value to which these fisheries have 



COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 131 

attained even now in their infancy is shown in the statis- 
tical statement that in 1884 the territory shipped 10,101 
cases of four dozen i-lb. cans, and 1,527 barrels of salted 
salmon, each barrel containing thirty fish. The cannery 
near Sitka put up 700 barrels. There were also shipped 
large quantities of halibut, herring, cod, rock cod and her- 
ring oil, and the year 1885 would have shown still better 
results but for a depression in prices which made the labor 
unprofitable. Notable among other establishments is the 
Chilkat cannery, situated in 59 deg. 13 min. north latitude, 
which is well up toward the frigid zone, but warmed like 
the rest of the Alaskan coast by the Japan current, or Kuro- 
Siwo, which corresponds to the gulf stream of the Atlan- 
tic. I dare say that no commercial company in the world 
ever found its way to a nook of earth so ineffably roman- 
tic ; for the grandeur of the surrounding scenery is 
supreme. Parallel ranges of snow-capped mountains of 
majestic height inclose a narrow strait, whose waters are 
deep and green, and seldom disturbed by the storms which 
beat the outer wall. High up in the bluest empyrean the 
glittering peaks flash to each other the reflections of the 
noonday sun, and where the silvery summer clouds rest 
upon the summits the eye can scarcely distinguish the 
fleecy vapor from the spectral snow. Below the timber 
line their sides are clothed with fir and hemlock, and in the 
dark waters under the shadow of their confronting but- 
tresses the salmon are continually tossing the spray, so that 
the surface fairly boils. Through one of the clefts of the 
mountains the sparkling Chilkat River leaps over the 
obstructing rocks in a succession of pools and rapids, and 
upon the point of rocks at its mouth the cannery stands. 
Perched upon a ledge so narrow that the wharves and fish- 
ing stages can scarcely keep a foothold above the tide, it 
looks out toward a long vista of headlands, whose clear-cut 
outlines are set against the sky in graduated shades of 
blue, as they recede and overlap each other. And out of 
another great rift the famous Davidson glacier presses 
toward the sea, filling a valley four miles wide ; and the 
masses of ice, which are successively pushed to the front 
and break off, float away with the recurring tides, and 
chassez up and down the landlocked channel until they 
finally melt away or drift out into the ocean. On a beach 
near by is a village of Indian employes, with the usual 
adjuncts of half-dried salmon spread on the rocks, rueful 
dogs, and log canoes drawn up on shore and carefully pro- 
tected from the weather by boughs and blankets when not 



132 OUR NEW ALA SKA. 

in use. Gray and white gulls fill the upper air, or sit on 
the drifting icebergs and scream, while large wisps of sand- 
peeps flit constantly from point to point, feeding on the 
land-wash. In hours of toil the foreground is active with the 
movements of the canoes and boats hauling seines. This 
location is also known as " Pyramid Harbor." 

Captain Beardslee writes in his vivacious colloquial way : 
"One day I jumped in with Tom McCawley, one of the 
most experienced salmon seiners, and got him to show me 
how it was done. Our boat, rowed by four untiring 
Indians, had already a ton at least of fish just taken, but there 
was room for another, and McCawley wanted it. We rowed 
slowly around the various islands for an hour with no suc- 
cess ; the tide was high, the day too bright ; none were 
jumping. We pulled into a quiet, pleasant, little cove and 
lunched ; the Indians preparing for us a good pot of coffee, 
of which they are very fond, when well sweetened. With 
plenty of it, hard bread and smoked salmon, they can work 
forever. As we lay on the grass with our pipes, an Indian 
called out ' Fish! ' and pointed to a spot in the channel but a 
short way off. Soon another leaped, and in a moment we 
were in and off. I saw the fish jump, and, after a little 
time, another, or, as it seemed to me, the same one. I 
didn't think much of that school ; but when I said so, the 
Indians answered ' Tshugatahen ' (plenty), and Tom said : 
' When one jumps, there's a hundred under him that 
don't ; ' and that was news to me, for I expected to see the 
whole school at once, as one does porpoises. Pulling for 
the shore, fifty yards to the left of them, one end of the 
seine was landed and held by the crew of one of the boats 
(there were two), while the other rapidly pulled around the 
apparently deserted spot ; the hundred yards were soon 
placed, and ' Haul in ! ' was the order. I tended boat, our 
crew having also landed, and made fast to the outer row of 
corks, and was drawn in with them, peering anxiously into 
the diminishing circle. Soon I saw bright streaks darting 
rapidly to and fro, and then a dozen in the air glistening 
in the sunshine. The pool diminished, and a solid mass of 
plunging fish became visible ; not one leaped over the corks ; 
they dove as they approached the wall of net, rising in 
the center for convulsive leaps. In a few moments two 
tons of salmon, weighing five to twenty pounds each, were 
huddled together in a six-foot circle, and into this the 
Indians who were not holding net, dashed blow after blow 
of short, stout gaff hooks, jerking out with every dash a 
salmon — they simply ' fired at the flock,' and never missed. 



COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 133 

A jerk over the gunwales, and the noble fish lay heaped up, 
gasping and struggling. This was in July ; nearly all of 
the fish were good, and, according to McCawley, there were 
five varieties in the catch. A few which had begun to 
'dog' were cast into the canoe of an old Indian who 
accompanied us, and who had gleaned quite a canoe load of 
such as are considered unsuitable for canning." 

Heavily laden canoes bring the still struggling fish to the 
lift which hoists them to the cleaning table, where women 
dexterously sever the heads, cut off the fins and tails and 
draw the entrails, and then divide the bright red flesh into 
pieces of a proper size to fit the cans. Boys solder the tins, 
which are then put into boilers with their contents, and 
afterward resoldered, labeled and packed. Thus whole 
families are employed, the labor being divided among them 
according to their ability to perform. For their own use the 
Indians dry the salmon on the rocks in the sun, no salt being 
used. Their store-houses are often placed in the branches 
of trees, sometimes forty or fifty feet above the ground, it 
is said, with a view to keep them from the ravages of blow- 
flies and other pests. Many of these houses will hold sev- 
eral tons, and are used by a number of families in common; 
they are reached by notched poles, which are admirable sub- 
stitutes for ladders. Some persons assert that the custom 
of placing the boxes high is to keep them from dogs and 
wild animals, but the Indians assign only the one reason 
given. I have seen the same method employed elsewhere, 
by both Indians and white men. A spent salmon — a ' dog ' 
salmon, as it is termed — after spawning, is a sight to see ! 
I found one in shoal water some two feet long, as thin as a 
slab, feebly struggling as though he were trying to push 
himself ashore. I picked him up and landed him on the 
grass. A sicker fish never continued to wag its tail. His 
skin was yellow, picked out with green and blue spots (such 
as a good recoiler will leave on your arm after an all-day 
shoot). ' Spots from the size of a bit to that of a dollar, and 
one about an inch wide and six long on his side, were raw 
as if gnawed out by mice. One eye was gone, one gill 
cover eaten through, and every fin and his tail were but 
ragged bristles, all integument between the rays having 
disappeared. No wonder the legend arose that all Cali- 
fornia salmon die immediately after spawning. The Creoles 
and Indians catch daily great numbers of these sick fish 
with their gaffs, and they consider that they are better eat- 
ing when dried than the healthy fish. 

The quantities of salmon found in Alaska are simply 



134 O UK NE W ALA SKA. 

enormous. I have watched the movements of Eastern 
salmon in the most prolific rivers of Canada during their 
spawning season, but have*nowhere found them in such 
compacted masses as they appear in Pacific waters. Only 
where dams or natural falls obstructed their free passage 
were they sufficiently crowded, in those Canadian rivers, to 
interfere at all with each other, or with the comfortable 
ascent to the upper streams ; they had always elbow-room 
for acrobatic leaps and somersaults. On the Pacific coast 
their numbers are incalculably greater — perhaps a hundred 
fold. During the period of their annual mid-summer 
" runs " they swim in schools ten feet deep or more, with 
ranks closed up solid. Only those of our Eastern fishermen 
who are familiar with the swarming of mossbunkers, herring 
and bluefish can have any conception of their multitudes. 

Of course we are all accustomed to the current stories of 
their innumerable hosts out West, yet I will deliberately 
strain the credulity of the reader by over-reaching state- 
ments far more marvelous and declare that in Alaska the 
salmon jam the estuaries and inlets so that they can not 
move at all ! I have seen the outlet of Lake Loring, which 
is a rivulet two miles long and two rods wide, connecting 
the salt water with the fresh, so choked with living salmon 
that if a plank were laid across their protruding backs a man 
could walk across dry shod. It is so with other similar 
localities. On the southwestern coast the mountains rise 
from the ocean quite abruptly, so that there are but two 
rivers of any considerable length which cut their way through 
the granite ridges from the interior ; but the melting of the 
snows upon the peaks fills all the valleys and pockets bor- 
dering upon the coast, forming picturesque lakes whose 
outlets reach the ocean through short rugged channels worn 
deeply into the rocks. The tide there rises some eighteen 
feet, and when it is low the outflow of the lakes makes its 
romantic journey to the brine by a series of rapids and 
tempting pools, where brook trout of two varieties can be 
caught with a bait of salmon roe, or even with a fly, afford- 
ing good sport to the angler. But whenever the tide begins 
to make, the whole vicinity of the outlet at once swarms 
with impatient salmon, and as the channel gradually fills 
with the growing flood the schools press inward and upward 
from outside, until, finally, when the tide is full, the stream 
becomes a slack-water channel reaching from the salt water 
to the very border of the lakes, of which every cubic foot is 
choked with fish wedged tightly. No theater lobby on a 
benefit night, nor sheep van on a transportation line, was 



COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 135 

ever packed more solid. In such extremity the helpless 
salmon become an easy prey to animals and men. One can 
lift them out with his hands until he is tired. It is almost 
impossible to thrust a spear or boat-hook into the mass, and 
of course a fish must come out whenever it is withdrawn. 
Bears take their opportunity to scoop them out with their 
great paws, and when they have regaled themselves to 
satiety they retire to the adjacent thickets for a dessert of 
berries which grow there in great abundance and variety. 
Of course a great many salmon get into the lakes at every 
tide, but after each recession multitudes are stranded, of 
which the lustiest flop back into the ocean, while the maimed 
and hapless remain dead and stranded on the denuded 
rocks. 

It is said that salmon were exceptionally numerous on the 
Alaska coast in the two years just past, but there seems to 
be no doubt that they are always more abundant there than 
in the more southern latitudes of British Columbia and Ore- 
gon ; and they swarm clear across the Behring Strait to the 
coast of Siberia and down to Japan, filling all the waters 
with their incalculable numbers. In the vicinity of such 
hosts the problem of bait disappears. Salmon enough can 
be bought there for a dime to furnish bait for five thousand 
pounds of halibut or cod, and if some enterprising Yankee 
will only turn his attention to the opportunity wnich the 
Alaskan waters offer, he can supply every Atlantic fisher- 
man with bait and freeze out the Kanucks so that they will 
never seize any more fishing vessels for violation of their 
obnoxious laws. 

The halibut of Alaska are bound to be a source of large 
revenue, although at present the fishery is in its infancy. 
Great numbers are taken from the numerous banks along 
the coast ; they grow to an enormous size, sometimes reach- 
ing five hundred pounds in weight. Captain Morrissey, of 
San Francisco, in the year 1880, filled up the schooner 
General Miller in less than a month on the banks off Sitka, 
taking one hundred tons of halibut at the rate of 7,000 
pounds per day. There can be no question but that this 
business will be some day followed up with profit, especially 
in view of the remarkable depletion of the Atlantic fish- 
eries, which, in 1885, were reduced to one-fourth their 
former proportions ; of which Prof. Goode, of the Smith- 
sonian Institution, has written as follows : 

" At the beginning of the present century these fish were 
exceedingly abundant in Massachusetts Bay. From 1830 to 
1850, and even later, they were extremely abundant on 



136 OUR NE W ALA SKA. 

George's banks ; since 1850 they have partially disappeared 
from this region ; the fishermen have recently been following 
them to other banks, and, since 1874, out into deeper and 
deeper water, and the fisheries are now .carried on almost 
exclusively in the gullies between the off-shore banks and on 
the outer edges of the banks in water 100 to 350 fathoms in 
depth. The species has, in like manner, been driven from 
the shallow fishing grounds on the coast of Europe ; there 
is, however, little reason to doubt that they still are present 
in immense numbers within easy access off the British and 
Scandinavian coasts, and that a good fishery will yet grow 
up when the fishermen of those countries shall have become 
more enterprising. In the year 1879 there were forty vessels, 
of 3,168 tons, from Gloucester, Mass., employed exclusively 
in the fresh halibut fishery. The total catch of halibut on 
the New England coast for 1879 is estimated at 14,637,000 
pounds. 

" In 1885, the halibut fleet of Gloucester is reduced to one- 
fourth of its former size, and the total catch is estimated at 
from three to five million pounds. It is evident that within 
a few years the American off-shore halibut grounds will be 
so depleted that the fresh halibut fishery on our coasts will 
be abandoned. We shall then derive our chief supply from 
the waters of Greenland and Iceland, where several ves- 
sels go each year to bring back cargoes of salt ' flitches.' 
Halibut will come into our markets only in a smoked condi- 
tion, and the species will be as unfamiliar in our fish markets 
as it is in those of the old world." 

But why go to the British and Scandinavian coasts, or to 
the waters of Greenland and Iceland, when Alaska is so 
convenient, the cost of bait almost nothing, the transit 
across the continent so rapid, and refrigerators so complete ? 
If we have fresh Pacific salmon in our eastern markets, why 
not fresh halibut as well, that the species may remain 
" familiar ? " If salt fish are required, or halibut fins, salt 
can perhaps be manufactured on the coast from sea water 
by evaporation, as it now is at places on the California sea- 
board ; or the halibut can be sun-dried or smoked. Salmon 
are used for bait. The Indians are adepts at taking these 
great fish. They do not fish from the canoes, but set lines 
which are attached to floats — generally bladders — to which 
are fastened little flags on staffs. Among a group of them 
the fisherman watches, and when the hooked fish has 
exhausted itself towing the float, he is secured. It is very 
exhilarating to the novice to see the floats, when a fish is 
on, go diving and darting through the water at the rate of 



COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 1 37 

ten knots an hour. The hook is a native contrivance, 
which is far more efficient than any shop-rig, made usually 
of two pieces of tough wood, each about eleven inches long, 
beveled at the ends, so that when joined and seized with 
twine or sinew, they form a < , or angle, with an opening five 
inches wide; an iron spike passes through the lower jaw, 
inclining inwardly, the upper jaw of the hook serving as a 
guide to the jaw of the fish, which can not be withdrawn 
without catching on the point of the spike. A fish which 
once takes hold, seldom gets away. 

In 1884 Captain Exon, of Portland, Oregon, equipped a 
vessel for deep sea-fishing, with the prosecution of which he 
was familiar, but had hardly demonstrated the value of this 
method, and the abundance of fish where sought, before 
he was unfortunately drowned. Other practical men are 
now investigating the subject with the purpose of prose- 
cuting the business to a profitable result if they find the 
conditions as favorable as they believe them to be. There 
are also a few San Francisco fishermen who visit the Alaska 
coast for cod, of which they salt some 2,000 tons annually. 

Another newly introduced industry is the manufacture 
of fish oil for dressing leather and preparing jute for market. 
The first factory of the kind was established at Kilsinoo, 
last spring, by the Northwest Trading Company, and a ship- 
ment of 20,000 barrels was made in September last, of 
which 12,000 barrels went the long distance to New York ; 
but it will not be long before there will be many oil factories 
on the Alaska coast, for all the bays and estuaries swarm 
with oil-producing fish, and the product is limited only by 
the capacity of the works and the supply of casks. This 
company expects to manufacture 300,000 gallons this 
season — equal to a hundred car-loads. At Skidegate, on the 
British Columbian coast, there is a factory for extracting 
oil from the livers of dogfish, whose output this year is 
50,000 gallons. This oil is admitted to be superior to any 
other kind as a lubricant. It is shipped chiefly to the 
United States, where it pays a duty of 25 per cent., though 
small quantities are consumed in the Province, or sent to 
Honolulu and China. In another year or so this industry 
will probably establish itself on the Alaska coast as well, 
and thereby save the duty. 

The foregoing summary refers to the meager fishing 
industries of Alaska already existing, but I will show, in the 
statements that follow, what enormous possibilities of lucra- 
tive employment and revenue lie in the immediate future. 
Certainly the waters of the Pacific are far more prolific of 



138 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

fish and other marine forms than the Atlantic, or even the 
Gulf of Mexico. For not only do we find the sea lion, the 
fur seal, the sea otter, and other exceptional forms of marine 
life in vast numbers, but we find the cod, the tom-cod, the 
halibut, the herring, the flounder, the salmon, the sea-trout 
of the same or closely related species, common to the 
Atlantic coast ; and we find them differing in size, many 
larger and frequently more abundant, but dissimilar in 
color and flavor — and, beside these, a great many varieties 
unknown to Atlantic waters, and of especial economic 
value. Principal among the latter are the sculpins, the 
scorpaenids, sebastichthydae, and the embiotocoid or vivi- 
parous fishes, which comprise a great number of species. 
At the same time it may be borne in mind that there are 
many Atlantic fishes, like the blackfish, cunner, striped bass, 
porgy, sheepshead, bluefish, etc., which have no analogues 
on the Pacific. The viviparous fish maybe said to be some- 
what intermediate in external appearance, as they are in 
structure, between the labrids and the sparids, but "they are 
readily recognizable and distinguished from all others by 
ichthyologists. In reproduction they develop a uterus-like 
envelope, which incloses the young fish to the number of 
from seven or eight to forty, and these are hatched out at 
maturity just like a litter of kittens or mice. The family is 
characteristic of the western coast, only two or three species 
being known to ocean beyond the limits of the Pacific coast 
of temperate North America, and these few only on the 
opposite coast of the Pacific in the northern temperate 
region, and possibly in the opposite hemisphere in the tem- 
perate seas of New Zealand and Australia. The numerous 
varieties of sebastichthys are locally known as " rock-cod," 
but they have not the remotest relation to the family 
Gadidag. There are no less than twenty-eight of them on 
the Pacific coast, of which six are found in Alaskan waters. 
Several of them are highly colored and very beautiful — 
bright scarlet, banded yellow and black, pink-spotted, etc. 
Indeed, the fish of the Pacific are more highly colored as a 
rule than their congeners of the Atlantic, a characteristic 
equally true of most of the marine forms — animals, mollusks, 
crustaceans, plants, etc., as well as of the land flora and . 
fauna, the fruits, vegetables, shrubs, trees, and flowers. 
One of the rockfish just referred to very closely resembles 
the Florida red snapper in color and general appearance, 
though the structural differences are quite apparent when 
specimens of each are examined side by side. As a class 
they are good edible fish. Most of them are caught in deep 



COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 141 

water on rocky ledges, a half mile or so from shore, often 
in thirty fathoms, with hard clams, crabs or fresh meat for 
bait, and it is very easy to determine whenever the fisher- 
man swings off from a ledge, for the fish stop biting, a fact 
which shows how important it is to ascertain and keep the 
exact location of their feeding grounds. Besides these 
there are many kinds of fishes not at all related to this 
family, or to each other, which are called rock-cod. One 
such, which is familiarly known in Alaska as the black-cod, 
rock-cod, and coal-fish, is likely to form a valuable addition 
to our list of economic fishes, and may well fill the place of 
substitute for some other kinds which may have become or 
may become scarce. No one has labored half so hard to 
secure the introduction of this estimable fish into our 
markets as the Hon. James G. Swan, who is the Hawaiian 
consul at Port Townsend, Washington Territory, and a 
veteran correspondent of the Smithsonian Institution ; and 
I regard it fortunate for the integrity of this chapter of my 
volume that I find available for republication here an 
admirable report of the habits, habitat, and quality of the 
black-cod from the Bulletin of the United States Fisheries 
Commission, and from which I cull the following extracts. 
[Scientifically the fish is known as Anoplopoma fimbria.} 

The report says : 

" The Anoplopoma fimbria is known in California as the 
candle-fish, Spanish mackerel, grease-fish, etc.; among the 
Makah Indians of Cape Flattery, Wash., as ' beshow,' and 
by the white residents of the cape as ' black-cod.' On 
Queen Charlotte's Islands, British Columbia, it is called 
'■ coal-fish ' by white settlers, and by the Haidah Indians, who 
reside on those Islands, it is called ' skil.' At Knight's In- 
let, British Columbia, it is called ' kwakewlth.' Each tribe or 
locality where it is taken has a local name for it, but it is gen- 
erally known as black cod. The scientific name, anoplopoma 
fimbria, has been adopted by Gill, Jordan and Gilbert, and 
most other writers, although a specimen taken off Mount 
Saint Elias, Alaska, was named by Pallas Gadus fimbria 
(Proc. U. S. Nat. Museum, 1881, vol. 4, p. 254), thus showing 
that its resemblance to the cod was observed by that nat- 
uralist. The term 'cod ' is applied by fishermen and fish- 
dealers on the North Pacific coast to a variety of fish which 
are not related to the genus Gadus, and are not found in 
Atlantic waters. The Ophidon elongatus is called in San 
Francisco, buffalo cod, Green cod, blue cod, etc. At Cape 
Flattery the Makah Indians call it ' tooshkow.' The whites 
call it 'kultus' cod, or inferior to true cod. The different 



142 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

varieties of Sebastichthys are known in the Victoria and San 
Francisco markets as rock-cod, but do not resemble the 
rock-cod of New England in any manner, being more like 
the perch, having a remarkable development of sharp bony- 
spines and prickles. The popular name of black-cod t ap- 
plied to the Anoplopoma fimbria does not seem any more of 
a misnomer than to call the Ophidon elongatus blue or green 
cod. In general appearance the black-cod resembles a pol- 
lock, but when fully grown they have the rounded form of 
a true cod, but are not so marked. In color they are a 
dark olive brown or sepia on the back, with grayish sides 
and belly; the flesh is white and very fat, like mackerel, and 
they have been sold in San Francisco under the name of 
Spanish mackerel when of small size. Professor Jordan 
says: 'The young ones are taken off the wharves at 
Seattle, but are not much thought of as a food-fish. It attains 
its greatest perfection in very deep water, where it attains 
a size of 40 inches, and a weight of 15 pounds. Instances are 
not uncommon of black-cod being taken measuring 50 
inches and weighing 30 pounds, but the average is much 
less than this last. But it is an admitted rule that the 
deeper the water the larger the fish.' 

"Although I have the credit of first introducing this fish 
in a marketable shape to the public, yet it has been known 
to the officers and employes of the Hudson's Bay Company 
for many years, but was seldom seen on their tables ; the 
enormous quantities of salmon, eulachon, herring, cod, 
halibut and other fish, easily and plentifully taken, made it 
unnecessary to incur the trouble of fishing in the deep 
water for the black-cod. The first I saw of them was at: Neah 
Bay, Wash. Terr., at the entrance of Fuca Strait, in 1859. 
An old Indian caught a few when fishing for halibut. I 
procured one, which I broiled, and found it equal to a No. 1 
mackerel. I have occasionally seen the ' beshow ' every 
summer that I have been at Neah Bay since 1859, but I 
have never had an opportunity to get any quantity of them 
till in September, 1883, while at Skidegate, Queen Charlotte's 
Islands, which I visited under instructions from Professor 
Spencer F. Baird. I succeeded in procuring about 100 of 
them. The Haidah Indians take them in considerable 
quantities on the west coast of the group of islands, 
in the deep waters of the inlets and harbors, for the purpose 
of extracting the oil or grease, which is used as food by the 
natives, and is similar in appearance to the eulachon grease, 
which is of the color and consistency of soft lard. From 
Montery to the Arctic ocean the Anoplopoma is found. It 



COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 143 

feeds on crustaceans, worms and small fish. Hitherto it has 
not been introduced among the whites as a food-fish, owing 
to the superstitious prejudice of some tribes against, fishing 
for them to sell. 

" A lot I took to Victoria dry-salted in boxes were the first 
ever seen in a merchantable condition in that city, and the 
four boxes I sent to the United States Fish Commission 
are the first ever exported from the Province of British 
Columbia, a fact to which special reference was made by the 
collector of customs of Victoria in his quarterly report to the 
Minister of Finances in Ottawa. 

" As the Haidah Indians seem to be the only ones who 
make a business of taking the black-cod or ' skil,' I will 
confine myself to a description of a method adopted by them. 
The fish lines used in the capture of the black-cod are 
made of kelp, in a manner similar to that of the Makahs, of 
Cape Flattery, and other tribes on the northwest coast. 
This giant kelp the Nereocystis (Harvey) is of the order 
Laminariacce, and is of much larger dimensions than the 
Fucacece, the fronds being measured by fathoms, not feet. 
Some of these plants, it is said, when fully grown, have a 
stem measuring 300 feet in length. These grow where the 
water is rapid, and have to extend to a great length before 
their buoyancy will permit them to reach the surface. For 
about two-thirds of this length from the root up, the stem 
is about the size of a halibut line. It then expands till at 
the extremity it assumes a pear-shaped hollow head, capa- 
ble of holding a quart, and from which extends a tuft of 
upward of fifty leaves, lanceolate in form, each of which is 
from 40 to 50 feet long. The slender stem is of prodigious 
strength, and is prepared by the natives for use as fol- 
lows : The stems being cut off a uniform length, generally 
15 or 25 fathoms each, are placed in running fresh water 
till they become bleached and all the salt is extracted. 
They are then stretched and partially dried in the open air, 
then coiled up and hung in the smoke of a lodge for a short 
time. Then they are wet and stretched again and knotted to- 
gether. This process is continued at regular intervals till 
the kelp stems become tough and as strong as the best hemp 
line of the same size. After using, it is always coiled up, 
but as it gets brittle if allowed to dry too much it is inva- 
riably soaked in salt water before being used. The hooks 
used are of a peculiar shape, unlike any fish-hook I have 
ever seen; they are made of the knots or butts of limbs of 
the hemlock, cut out from old decayed logs. These knots 
are split into splints of proper size, then roughly shaped 



144 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

with a knife, and then steamed and bent into shape, which 
shape they retain when cold. This form is adopted, so the 
Indian informed me, because the bottom on the west coast 
is very foul with stones and coral formations and incrus- 
tations ; steel hooks get fast, and lines are subject to being 
lost ; but this style of hook does not get fast. 

" When the hook is to be used the bait is tied on with the 
string which is used to bring the two ends of the hook 
together and keep them in position when not baited. After 
the bait is well secured a piece of stick is inserted to press 
the ends of the hook apart. When the fish bites the bait it 
knocks out the stick, which floats to the surface, the two 
ends of the hook, springing together, close on the fish's head 
and hold it fast. It is usual to tie from seventy-five to one 
hundred hooks to the line, at a distance of about two feet 
apart, and the fish are so plentiful that not unfrequently every 
hook will have a fish. The sticks which float to the sur- 
face, when knocked out of the hook by the fish, serve to 
indicate to the Indian the sort of luck he is having at the 
bottom. But although the fish maybe abundant, the Indian 
is not always sure of securing what he has caught. His 
greatest annoyance is the ground-sharks or nurse-fish, as 
the sailors call them, which will often eat the bodies of the 
black-cod, leaving only the heads attached to the hooks. 
Another annoyance is from a small fish called by the Haidah 
Indians ' nee-kaio-kaiung,' the Blepsias cirrhosus (Pallas) 
Gun., one of the family Cottidce, which steals the bait and 
often gets hooked ; as soon as the Indian discovers this pest 
he quits fishing and goes to another place. As the depth 
of the water varies in different places it is usual to have a 
lot of spare lines in the canoe which can instantly be knotted 
together and form a line as long as required ; sometimes two 
hundred fathoms will be used, as the line when fully supplied 
with hooks becomes a trawl. A most ingenious contrivance 
is the sinker used by the Haidahs in this deep-water fishing. 
This is a stone, from ten to twenty pounds in weight. A 
small kelp line is wound round this stone and held by a 
bight tucked under the turns, and the end made fast to the 
end of the larger line, which large line is wound round this 
stone, and a smaller stone which serves to bind it fast and 
as a sort of tripping stone. The large line is secured in a 
similar manner as the small line, by a loop or bight tucked 
under the turns. The stone is then lowered to the bottom 
and the line paid out. As soon as the fisherman sees 
enough pegs floating to warrant his pulling in the line he 
gathers in the slack till he feels the weight of the stone, 



COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 145 

when he gives a sudden jerk, which pulls out the bight and 
loosens the tripping stone, which falls out and loosens the 
big stone, which in turn becomes detached from the line, 
which is then pulled in relieved of the weight of the 
sinker. 

" On my arrival at Skidegate, in the last of August, 1883, 
I arranged with Mr. Andrew McGregor, one of the partners 
in the Skidegate, to send some Indians to the west coast to 
procure some black-cod. He sent four Indians, Scanayune, 
Ske-at-lung, Ingow and Skatsgai, who all belong to the 
Gold Harbor band on the west coast. I sent a sack of salt 
with the Indians, with instructions to take out the gills, 
remove the viscera without splitting the fish, and then fill 
the cavity with salt, which was done, and the fish were 
received in prime condition. On the 2d of September 
Scanayune returned with twenty fine fish. A council was 
now called to decide the best way to split them. There were 
a number of eastern fishermen present, who were the crew 
of the little steamer Skidegate, engaged in dog-fishing for 
the oil works. Some were of the opinion that the fish should 
be split in the back, like a salmon ; but I objected, as I 
thought people would say they were the white-flesh dog- 
salmon and be prejudiced, so I had them split and dressed 
like cod, and well salted in a vat. But now my trouble com- 
menced. I was of the opinion, as were all the others, that 
the fish should be barreled like salmon ; but we had no bar- 
rels or coopers, and the question was how to get them to 
Victoria without rusting, for we all thought that so fat a 
fish would rust like a mackerel or salmon. At last I recol- 
lected how I had seen halibut treated when it was to be 
smoked, and I decided on that plan. After the fish had 
been in salt two weeks I rinsed them in the pickle they had 
made, and piled them skin side up, put planks and heavy 
stones on them, and so pressed out the pickle. After they 
had been four days under this pressure I found them hard 
and firm, and beautifully white. I then packed them in 
boxes, which I made for the purpose, putting twenty fish in 
each box and filling up with dry salt. My intention was to 
repack them in Victoria and put them in barrels, but on 
examining the boxes on my arrival I found the fish in such 
fine condition that I was advised by experts of the Hudson's 
Bay Company to send the fish forward just as they were ; 
and so well satisfied were the officers of the company with 
the plan I had adopted through necessity, that the chief 
factor, William Charles, Esq., instructed the company's 
agent at Massett, Mr. McKenzie, to procure all the black- 



146 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

cod he could get from the Indians, to cure them in every 
respect as I had done, and to pack them in similar pack- 
ages, as it was thought they would take better in the Lon- 
don market. 

" I tested the fresh fish in every manner I could think of. 
I had the livers and we fried and found them delicious. The 
females were full of eggs, which I found very small, about 
the size of herring spawn. This was the first of September, 
but I had no opportunity of ascertaining the spawning 
season or their spawning ground. I tried the tongues, but 
did not like them as well as cod-fish tongues, as they were 
quite small. The fish does not make a good chowder, as it 
is too fat ; the heads, however, after having been salted, we 
found made excellent chowder. The best way in which 
the fresh fish can be cooked is to broil it like fresh mackerel, 
or roast it before the open fire like planked shad. After it 
has been salted, as I salted those I put up, it should be 
cooked by first soaking till the salt is well out, then simply 
boiled and served with plain boiled potatoes. Made into 
fish-balls it excels any fish I have eaten. On the 6th day of 
October, 1883, I gave George Vienna, the fish dealer on 
Government street, Victoria, one of the black-cod, which he 
hung up in his stall for every one to examine. On the 18th 
day of December I examined the same fish, which had been 
exposed to the weather in the stall all the time, and it was 
perfectly sweet. Mr. Vienna said it never would rust ; it 
was too well salted. A gentleman of Victoria, who had 
eaten of the black-cod heartily on several occasions, told 
me that he is unable to eat either salt salmon or mackerel, 
as the oil of these fish does not agree with his digestion, 
but he experienced no such effect from eating the fat black- 
cod, and mentioned the fact as something to be noticed. 

" Now that the experiment of my method of dry-salting 
the black-cod has proved a success by the encomiums passed 
upon the excellence of that fish as tested by the experts of 
the Boston Fish Bureau, who are undoubtedly some of the 
best critics and judges of fish in the United States, I wish 
to call attention to the economy of my method for the poor 
settlers on our northwest coasts of Washington Territory 
and Alaska. All that is required for outlay is the cost of 
the salt for curing the fish, and the nails for making boxes, 
which can be made from the white spruce which abounds 
on the coast, from the Columbia River to Western Alaska. 
This wood splits as easily as cedar, is perfectly sweet and 
free from resin, as all the gum is contained in the thin ring 
of sap-wood and bark. The inside is free from resin. This 



COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 147 

will make the cheapest and best of boxes and save the 
expense of coopers and barrels, and the fish being of full 
size is better adapted for smoking than the same fish cut 
and barreled. 

" The Fishery for the Black-Cod. — A very important ques- 
tion to be answered is : Will the black-cod be taken in suffi- 
cient quantities to supply the demand which is likely to spring 
up wherever their rare excellence is known ? I think that 
at present the supply will be limited, as there are no fisher- 
men on the North Pacific coast who have the appliances or 
the experience in deep sea fishing as practiced at present on 
the Atlantic coast. Our coast fisheries are exclusively con- 
fined to salmon, which are taken in the rivers with nets and 
seines. The very few cod and halibut brought to our 
markets are taken with hand-lines and old-fashioned trawls, 
but it is rare to find any fishermen working in more than 
thirty fathoms of water. Our waters teem with fish, but as 
yet, with the exception of salmon, no organized plan has 
been tried for taking quantities of fish What we want are 
Eastern fishermen with Eastern capital and Eastern methods of 
taking fish. If such men would come out here they can 
find plenty of black-cod, but they will be found in deep, 
swift water, where at times it is pretty rough. But to a 
' Grand Banker ' or a ' George's Banker ' our most turbu- 
lent waters would be but a plaything. In order to develop 
the fisheries of Puget Sound and the Alaskan "waters there 
should be some regular wholesale fish dealers established, 
who would take every thing the fishermen would bring, and 
find markets themselves. Our fishermen are too poor to 
send their fish to a distant market ; but let a wholesale 
dealer with capital establish himself, and he would find that 
fish would be brought from all quarters, white men and 
Indians working with a will to catch fish which would bring 
them ready money. 

" The best season of the year for taking black-cod is in 
the spring, when the eulachon run up the inlets and streams 
where they spawn ; the black-cod follow them, and can be 
taken in quantities ; but I am informed by both Haidah and 
Makah Indians that the black-cod can be taken in the deep 
water at any season of the year when the weather will per- 
mit fishing. There are undoubtedly certain seasons which 
are better than others for taking this fish, but as yet no one 
has made a study of their habits." 

Herring swarm in the bays and inlets of Alaska during 
the spawning season in the spring, but are not at that time 
of as good quality as when taken in nets from their perma- 



148 OUR NE IV ALA SKA. 

nent banks and feeding grounds. The Indians catch great 
quantities with poles and boards, armed with sharp nails at 
an angle. These are thrust under the schools, which swim 
about two feet deep, and the fish are gaffed out. The her- 
ring spawn in salt water, and their favorite places are the 
quiet bays along the shores, and there every kind of kelp 
and seaweed is crusted with the spawn, and as the tide goes 
down and one walks along the beach, every step crushes 
myriads. I can not discover that they enter the fresh water 
streams at all. The most careful investigation has failed to 
discover their spawn attached to plants beyond the reach of 
tide. The Indians do not collect the eggs deposited on the 
seaweed, but plant at half-tide marks rows of branches of 
cedar and balsam, which, in a tide or two, become covered 
with spawn ; these are replaced by others, and hung up to 
dry. The spawn is eaten dried, raw and cooked in various 
ways, and is very palatable in either. These, however, are 
somewhat smaller than those of Europe, though fully equal 
in quality when taken in their prime. There is a factory on 
Burrard inlet, near the Canadian Pacific railway terminus, 
where herring oil is pressed out and fertilizers made from 
the scraps. The success of the menhaden fishing in the 
East should encourage herring fishing in the West. 

Comparing my personal observations made at sundry 
times and places, I find the range of the true cod, halibut, 
salmon, sea trout and some other fish to be the same on both 
sides of the continent. The cod range between the fiftieth 
and sixtieth parallels of latitude. In the East the principal 
food of the shore-cod is the caplin, and the fishermen not 
only use caplin chiefly for bait, but they follow their move- 
ments to ascertain the whereabouts of the cod. On the west 
side (the Pacific) the oolachan, or the candle-fish, is the cor- 
respondent of the caplin, and is almost identical with it. It 
is smoked, salted and dried on the rocks in the same way, 
and is largely used for food by the Indians, being very de- 
licious, but it is much more oily and will burn like a candle. 
Oolachan oil is considered superior to cod liver oil or any 
other fish oil known. It is of a whitish tint, about the con- 
sistency of thin lard, and is a staple article of barter between 
the coast Indians and the interior tribes. The fish begin 
running about the first of March, and swarm into the rivers 
and estuaries by the million for several weeks, the waves of 
each flood tide stranding them upon the beach in windrows a 
yard wide and several inches deep. This period should be 
the cod-fishing season, which is three months earlier than in 
Labrador. They are caught in purse nets by the canoe load. 



COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 149 

In the province of British Columbia, where the manufacture 
of the oil is prosecuted to some extent, the fish are boiled in 
water about four hours in five-barrel wooden tanks with iron 
bottoms, and then strained through baskets, made from 
willow roots, into red cedar boxes of about fifteen gallons 
capacity each. When the run of fish is good, each tribe 
will put up about twenty boxes of oil. 

Sturgeon are said to exist in the interior, and if such be 
the fact, which I can not vouch for of my own personal 
knowledge, here is another opportunity for lucrative profit 
to energetic operators, who can employ the Indians to cap- 
ture them. Wherever sturgeon are found in Canada or the 
United States, the catching of them is prosecuted with great 
pecuniary advantage, for there is no part of this extraordi- 
nary fish that can not be utilized, and in bulk they often 
reach 150 pounds avoirdupois. Sturgeon have a wide dis- 
tribution, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and 
through many degrees of north and south latitude. They 
are abundant in Fraser River, British Columbia, and in the 
Peace River country much further north, whose waters 
head in the same great divide or watershed which separates 
the north-eastern tributaries of the Yukon ; and there seems 
to be no physical reason why they should not exist in the 
interior of Alaska. Indeed, I have an impression that 
Lieutenant Schwatka mentions their being there. The 
strongest evidence to the contrary is the fact that the Rus- 
sians, who make such an extensive commodity of the stur- 
geon and its products elsewhere, did not prosecute this 
industry in Alaska. However, and whether or no, the 
methods of catching sturgeon are so unique and the econo- 
mic value of the fish so great, that I dare say a description 
of them here will prove interesting to the reader, even 
though the subject be not strictly Alaskan. In the first 
place, sturgeon are caught in seines, pound-nets, and drift- 
nets, during both winter and summer, and by hook and 
line. In winter gill-nets are set by an ingenious system of 
holes cut through the ice at equi-distant intervals, 
through which they are thrust and located by means of long 
poles with boat-hooks attached. The " pounds " used are 
the common trap-net with lead, heart and pocket. When 
drift-nets are used, they are handled from large flat-boats, 
and fishing is done only at night. In the morning the fish 
are hauled to a floating platform on the shore, where the 
heads, tails, entrails, backbone, and skin are removed, and 
the two sides are packed in ice in large boxes for shipment, 
to be sold for consumption while fresh, or for smoking else- 



15° OUR NEW ALASKA. 

where. Many fishermen inclose a space on the lake or 
river shore in three or four feet depth of water, by making 
a pen of piles or heavy stakes driven in the bottom. Here 
they are kept after being caught and fed until wanted 
for market. Numerous pens of this kind may be seen along 
the Detroit River and Lakes St. Clair and Huron. The 
American Angler, in describing the entire adaptability of 
the whole body of this most economical fish says : — " The 
meat of this fish is extremely nutritious, and when fat and 
properly employed is nearly equal to veal in its sustaining 
principles. When eaten from the young fish it highly 
savors, and partakes chiefly of that enticing flavor so much 
praised in the shad. Every part of the fish is utilized. 
The meat is often labeled salmon, and is often mistaken for 
the meat of that fish. The cartilaginous bones make a 
highly valued isinglass, and the stomach gives a most per- 
fect, clear, and adhesive glue. The residue is used as 
manure, and by the farmers is considered equal to that of 
sheep. The process of smoking is quite simple. After 
being cleaned the meat, which has no bones, like other 
fish, is cut into strips from one-half pound to two and three 
pounds weight, put into brine ten or twelve hours for cur- 
ing, hung up a short time to dry and then finished with the 
smoke of hickory or some hard wood for ten or twelve 
hours, when it is ready for boxing and shipment. The next 
largest industry connected with the sturgeon is the manu- 
facture and exportation of " caviar." This is nothing else 
than the roe or eggs of the female which, it is said, some- 
times equal one-third the weight of the fish. Generally the 
yield of the lake sturgeon is one and two gallons. These 
are taken in hand by experts, who manipulate them by sev- 
eral washings through sieves, with water strongly impreg- 
nated with the purest salt, obtained usually from Russia or 
Germany, until every shred and vestige of flesh and impurity 
is removed. The " caviar " is then treated to a certain 
seasoning of ingredients, known only to the initiated and 
carefully guarded from public ken, and put up in water- 
tight casks holding from 115 to 125 lbs., well headed to 
exclude the air. It is then ready for market and bears an 
average of twelve cents per pound, wholesale. In retail 
shops it sells at twenty-five and thirty cents, and is put up 
in small cans, one-half to two and three pounds in size. It 
would be difficult to give the tonnage of " caviar " that is 
prepared on the lakes and finds its way largely to New 
York and Boston, and probably in still larger amounts to 
Europe, and principally Russia and Germany. One dealer 



COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 151 

gives his annual trade at 400 kegs, say 60,000 lbs.; 4,000 
kegs of caviar were received at the single port of Hamburg, 
Germany, from the middle of June, 1885, to the middle of 
November, from the United States. The eggs are quite 
small and dark colored, entirely salty in taste, and without 
a superior as an appetizer. For table use caviar is seasoned 
with onions, pepper, and such condiments as are palatable 
to the eater, and spread in its raw state upon bread and 
eaten with it, much as butter is. It is a highly popular dish 
among the Russians, who make it in its perfection, and is 
to them what Limburger cheese is to the Dutch. But the 
American people are gradually bringing their taste up to 
the Russian delicacy, as they are also fast bringing it up to 
the Frenchman's frog. The taste has to be educated to 
enjoy its gustatory flavor. It seems to have been known 
in Shakespeare's time. He makes Hamlet say : ' For 
the play, I remember, pleased not the million. 'Twas 
caviar to the general,' from which it would seem not 
to have been a universal favorite. The value of the 
sturgeon is still further enhanced by its large air bladder 
or sound. When taken from the fish it is split open, thor- 
oughly cleansed and prepared by men who understand the 
business. When dry it is the isinglass of commerce, and 
sells usually at $1.50 per pound. The bladders are bought 
by the fishermen at five and six cents each. A considerable 
quantity is made in Detroit yearly. The sturgeon is 
one of the most oily of the finny tribe, and when put through 
the usual process yields a large percentage of oil, which is 
said to make a very good lubricating oil, and is also pre- 
ferred for greasing and softening harness." 

The Indians who dwell along the great Sascatchewan 
River in the British Northwest Territory, spear sturgeon 
in the river pockets just below shoals, where they resort to 
gather up whatever floats down stream and settles, just as 
all the tribes of suckers do ; and for this purpose they have 
an ingenious harpoon whose head comes out of the shaft 
whenever a fish is struck and fastened, but which is pre- 
vented from being carried off or lost by a free line which 
attaches it to the staff or handle. In roily or turbid waters 
where the fish can not be seen, they use a long pole, at the 
end of which are fastened, loosely, several large hooks, the 
shanks of which are tied to the pole with sinew or strong 
marline. The red man feels for the fish with his pole, 
and knowing by long practice when he has touched a fish 
he gives a strong pull backward, which sinks the sharp 
hook through the tough skin and deep into the flesh. The 



15 2 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

fish struggles and the hooks loosen from the pole, but are 
held fast by the line. Then it is only a question of strength 
to get the lethargic fellows out of the water, with may be a 
hearty wrestle on the bank to keep them out. 

In Alaska, flounders, anchovies, and sole are found in 
large numbers, but quite unlike the fishes called by the 
same names on the Atlantic ( coast. The sole is especially 
different from his celebrated European namesake. Dogfish 
and sculpins are not esteemed as edible fish, although they 
are very numerous and great nuisances to those who fish 
with hook and line. One kind of dogfish is beautifully 
spotted, and one of the sculpins (Hemilepidotus tracharut) 
looks very much like a rutabaga turnip covered with warts, 
with a slit clear across the big end for a mouth. He is so 
ugly that old fishermen torture him just for his ugliness. 

There are two kinds of coral found on the coast, and 
also sponges of fine texture, not round like the recognized 
sponges of commerce, but palmated with digital divisions, 
which might be made useful for many purposes. The sea 
cucumber is abundant also. When cured and dried it 
makes the article of commerce known as the beche de la mer, 
highly prized in China for food, where it is called "trepang." 
A valuable industry might be built up by preparing this 
commodity for market. Indeed there are lots of economi- 
cal natural products in this new and unprospected region 
which might reasonably prompt mercantile effort if atten- 
tion were only called to them. 

The immunity of the North Pacific ocean from the inter- 
mittent storms which devastate the Atlantic, makes most 
favorable comparison in its behalf as a field for commercial 
fisheries and a cruising ground for fishing vessels. Cyclones 
are seldom heard of there, while on the Labrador coast and 
the gulf of St. Lawrence alone, no less than three hundred 
vessels and twelve hundred lives have been lost in storms 
during the past twenty-five years. Besides this considera- 
tion, the scarcity of fish in Eastern waters within the past 
few years is making the fisheries a precarious business. 
Let the disappointed fisherman of the Atlantic coast mi- 
grate to Alaska ! The fishing seasons are different there, 
and not subject to interruptions of drifting ice in the 
spring and rough weather in the fall ; and there is no dan- 
ger of starvation, even if the fisheries should fail. I see no 
reason why the banks and littoral waters of the Alaskan 
Pacific may not swarm with fleets of fishing vessels as well 
as those of Newfoundland and Labrador. 



RAMBLES ALONG SHORE. 



As regards the anadromous and inland fresh water fish of 
Alaska, there are the salmon and the sea trout, the lake 
trout, at least two kinds of brook trout, pike, grayling, and 
a very superior whitefish. Silver salmon begin to arrive in 
March, or early in April, and last until the end of June. 
They generally weigh from four to twenty-five pounds, but 
sometimes reach seventy. The second kind are caught 
from June to August, and are considered the finest. The 
average size is only five or six pounds. The third, coming 
in August, average seven pounds, and are an excellent fish. 
The humpback appears every second year, remaining from 
August until winter, and weighs from six to fourteen pounds. 
The hookbill arrives in September, and remains till winter, 
its weight ranging from twelve to forty-five pounds. There 
are several other varieties of salmon, not all strictly edible, 
of which the most numerous is the dog salmon, eaten only 
by the Indians. The rainbow trout, S. iridea, and the cut- 
throat trout, which is especially distinguished by the crimson 
slashes under its gills, are found in many streams and also in 
the lakes. A larger lake trout, of the Dolly Varden type (-5*. 
Malma), with red spots as large as a pea, is found in the 
lakes on the small islands, as well as the mainland. The sea 
trout, identical with the Canadian sea trout, and spotted in 
the same way with blue and crimson spots, much like the 
Eastern brook trout, makes its appearance at stated inter- 
vals like its Atlantic brothers, and ascends the rivers to 
spawn. All kinds of trout take bait and fly. The sea trout 
takes the trolling spoon readily in the bays. It is found all 
the way from Victoria, B. C, northward to Bering Strait, 
and in the Arctic seas replaces the salmon, which is not 
found there at all. Its north and south range on the west 
coast corresponds very nearly with its range on the Eastern 
coast. It winters in the lakes which connect with salt 
water, and runs down the streams in the spring. The indi- 
genous fish of the streams are the Salmo iridea, but there are 
many streams in Alaska which are bare of all fish except in 
the early summer and fall, and then these self-same sea trout, 



154 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

migratory and anadromous, run up their channels to spawn, 
just as they do in the Canadian Atlantic. 

For other varieties of trout than this, Indian River and 
Saw Mill Creek, near Sitka, the Lake Loring outlet at Naha 
Bay, and other streams, afford good rod-fishing. Sport 
with the artificial fly is by no means as satisfying as it is in 
the East, or even in Oregon and Washington Territory, al- 
though at certain times it is fair. It may be said that, 
owing to the condition of water as affected by the melting 
snows in spring, and the subsequent superabundance of 
salmon roe with which every crevice is crammed after those 
fish begin to spawn, even bait-fishing can hardly be en- 
joyed except at certain periods. No fly will tempt the trout, 
nothing in fact but a chunk of nasty sticky spawn, which 
they will approach leisurely and feed on as daintily as a 
full fed kitten on a bit of meat. You must sink your 
weighted hock to the bottom, and keep up a series of little 
jerks as though you were bobbing for eels, and by and by 
you strike one ; once hooked they are quite gamy. 

The Salmo iridea is found here both in the lakes and 
streams, but there is another trout which differs much in 
appearance from varieties which I am familiar with. A spec- 
imen ten inches long, called "mountain trout " by the In- 
dians, had a body covered with black spots, from one-six- 
teenth to one-eighth inch in diameter. These extend con- 
siderably below the medial line and cover the tail and the 
dorsal fins ; the second dorsal is adipose, but slightly less 
so than that of a fontinalis, having a slight show of mem- 
brane on which there are four spots. The ventral and anal 
fins are yellowish in center, bordered with red, the tail is 
square, the belly a dull white. 

That the spawning seasons of families of fish similar to 
those of the Atlantic should be different on the Pacific, is 
easily accounted for by the warmer temperature of the 
water. It would seem that the laws of heat and cold have 
the same effect upon fish as they do upon vegetation, order- 
ing the seasons accordingly ; and the spawning of fish, like 
the budding of trees, may be advanced or retarded by mild 
or inclement weather ; stated visitations of pelagic or anad- 
romous fish may be postponed or even prevented by cold 
weather ; but the Pacific is less subject to these vicissi- 
tudes than the Atlantic. 

In Alaska there are few sandy beaches or gravelly shores. 
The margins of the mainlands and islands drop plump into 
many fathoms of water, so that the tide never goes out — it 
merely recedes, and when it is lowest it exposes the rank 



RA MBL ES AL ONG SHORE. 1 5 5 

yellow and green weeds which cling to the damp crags and 
slippery masses of rock, and the mussels and barnacles 
which crackle and hiss when the lapping waves recede. In 
some places there are little bights, a few yards wide, between 
the rocks, where there is a sort of beach formed entirely of 
comminuted shells ; and one can pick up cockles, round 
hard-shell clams and abelones by the peck — clams of all 
sizes, some large and tough, and some small and very sweet. 
Exceptionally there are areas of mud, where the gigantic 
geoduck, a soft-shell clam which sometimes weighs 8 lbs., 
vegetates in oozy retirement a foot beneath the surface, 
squirting aloft its tremendous jets, four feet high, whenever 
a passing foot chances to disturb its shellfish privacy, and 
there are also flats near the mouths of rivers which, on gala 
days when the festive clam luxuriates, seem to be filled 
with miniature fountains, squirting. As for the luscious and 
toothsome oyster, the abrupt conformation of the coast, with 
its rocky shores and almost fathomless waters, explains why 
there are none. I can not learn that any person has ever 
seen a native Alaskan oyster ; but there are a good many 
beds further south, in British Columbia, and I have eaten 
lots of the bivalves with genuine gusto. However, along 
side of a regulation " Saddle-rock" they look insignificant, 
inasmuch as seven stewed oysters go to the teaspoonful, by 
actual count ! 

To me it is a great pleasure to see what the ebb-tide un- 
covers, and to watch the career of the counter currents as 
they surge to and fro in the narrow channels betwixt sunken 
rocks — visible now at low water, and eloquent with the dan- 
gers of Peril strait or Seymour rapids — which are invisible 
when the flood is full. At flood or slack water the surface 
is as placid as the moon, but whenever the tide turns and 
the ebb or flood begins, it is strange to observe the tide-rips 
in what seems to be an interior land-locked lake. If one 
were to unexpectedly behold a surging commotion in the 
placid basins of the Adirondacks, he would scarcely be 
more startled. It is hard to grapple with the phenomenon. 
Immediately on the flood, all the trash and floating trees, 
chunks of ice, dead fish, loose seaweed, and what not, which 
have been floating about on the slack, begin to set in with 
the tide ; giant kelps with stems 20 fathoms long and broad 
streamers spreading in all directions and half under water, 
like the hair of a drowned woman, lift their weird forms as 
they drift by ; jelly-fish and medusae, almost translucent, 
with delicate tints of pearl, lavender, mauve, and brown, 
come in countless myriads, contracting and expanding like 



1 5 6 OUR NE W ALASKA. 

a living pulse, and with streaming filaments like threads of 
glass steadfastly follow the inexorable stream of fate, as if 
striving to overtake the lead ; schools of herring and small 
fish of all sorts swarm in all directions, skurrying onward and 
fretting the surface like flaws of wind ; and last of all, pre- 
datory and with fell intent, follow the whales and porpoises 
and thresher sharks, tumbling, sporting, diving and feasting 
with appetites never cloyed by repletion. Here and there 
along the shore, where some little bight makes into the 
land, herds of seals bob up serenely out of the water and 
gaze with large and solemn eyes. All the atmosphere is 
filled with the softened light of a summer haze, and the air 
aloft and roundabout is noisy with the scream of gulls and 
terns quartering the azure fields on the wings of the warm 
southwest winds. This is a summer picture of Alaska. 

As I stroll along the seething shore, with all the bowlders 
and crags slippery and rank with a pervading odor from the 
uncovered repository of the sea, peering into clefts and 
crannies, opening out rough snarls of seaweed with my 
crooked stick, and lifting pendulous draperies of soggy kelp, 
uncouth creatures with horny claws and bristling spines 
stare at me with glassy eyes, clinging defiantly to the place 
of their exposure. If I poke at them, they rise up on edge 
and snap and dart and pinch the stick. Some pettishly 
withdraw, spitting spiteful jets of acrimony, while others 
attach themselves by insidious discs or suckers which no 
small force or shrewd device is able to unloose. The Spirit 
of Evil clings not more tenaciously to human nature. If it 
had been my hand, nothing but shreds of flesh and blood 
would satisfy the grudge. With their protecting element, 
the sea, withdrawn, they are practically hors du combat, yet 
repellant. When the tide comes in, they will be aggressive 
enough. It is not a nice place for a bath. Here are giant 
crabs. Close by, moving inexplicably over the rocks, 
there seems a pewter wash-basin, bottom up, dingy with use, 
but turn it over, and we find it filled with a tangle of legs, 
sprawling and kicking ; and it has a handle a foot long, 
three-sided like a bayonet, serrated on the edges. It is a 
horseshoe crab, more horrid than hurtful. All over the 
sodden premises, scattered among the party-colored kelp and 
seaweeds, are conchs, abelones, periwinkles, and spirals, 
with their protruding tenants gasping for the beneficent 
moisture of the tardy tide. Touch them ever so gently, and 
some will pull in their heads, and some thrust them out 
further. They have a bland, innocuous look, yet if one of 
them once shuts down its valve on a presumptuous hand, 



RAMBLES ALONG SHORE. 157 

the creature will hold its grip until the tide comes in and 
drowns the man, for some of them are glued fast to the 
rocks so that no ordinary means will pry them off. In soft 
places sand-lances burrow deeply, leaving only their tails 
out ; and fiddler-crabs and craw-fish have burrows into 
which they dart when frightened. In some pockets of 
standing water left by the ebb, we will sometimes see a clam 
or scallop suddenly lift himself from the belittered bottom 
and go, by little convulsive jerks, to another place a few feet 
off. Yes, the object which seemed so helpless and inani- 
mate, almost like a stone, will actually rise up and swim. 
By opening and shutting his valves quickly, he inspires and 
expels the water from the membrane which joins the two, 
in such a way that he can propel himself through the water 
clear of the ground. I suppose he knows why he wishes to 
change his position, but how can he tell when and where to 
go with his shell shut ? or does he take the chances, happy- 
go-lucky, where he may land ? 

One can not always tell for certain which are sentient liv- 
ing creatures, and which are inorganic and inanimate. Here, 
for instance, is a cluster of tubes like hollow stalks or reeds 
cut off six inches above the ground and filled with water. 
Keep quiet for awhile, and blossoms of exquisite purple will 
begin to protrude from every one, and finally mature into a 
perfect bloom. It is like magic so to see things grow apace ! 
We think they are natural flowers, but they are only sense- 
less and slimy mollusks, capital for fish -bait and agreeable 
for the table, and the purple fringes are their gills. So also 
one picks up rough substances like bits of rock, and lo ! they 
are coral insects in their cases soft and juicy ; or we find on 
strings of sea-weed little bulbs like berries, which perchance 
are eggs of fishes. In wet caves, arched and smoothed by 
churning waves, starfish of many patterns pave the bottom 
like cobblestones — starfish of five, eight, ten, eighteen and 
twenty-two fingers or points, and of bright crimson, green, 
purple, pink, dark-red, yellow, drab and gray hues, and all 
the crabs and prawns left by the ebb climb and skip over 
their motionless bodies, seldom provoking them to stir the 
least bit out of position. On the piles of all the wharves, 
and wherever there are sunken logs or trees, anemones of 
pink and purest white grow in clusters shaped like lilies, 
only more mysteriously beautiful in their composite char- 
acter and blending of animal and vegetable forms. And 
there are many kinds of the repulsive octopus, with deca- 
pods and cephalopods and all the tribes of sepia and cuttle- 
fish, growing sometimes to gigantic sizes ; creatures such as 



158 OUR NEW ALA SKA. 

we used to think were mere fictions of gross fable, but are 
terrible realities, though seldom seen. And yet the little 
ones, only a few inches long, perhaps have all the villainous 
attributes of their superior kin — malicious eyes aflame, and 
yearning tentacles, which seem to shrink while momentarily 
alert to fling out their inexorable clasp upon the wrist or 
arm. And there are ink-fish, which in their natural element 
eject a liquid cloud to befog their pursuers or blind their 
victims — double-dyed scamps, who advance backward by 
jerks, and look one way when they are going the opposite. 
And on every landwash, when the tide is out, are stranded 
jelly-fish, limp and flabby, which blister where they touch 
the flesh, and beautiful medusee with stings like nettles, and 
great black sea-spiders, ugly but harmless, and shark's eggs 
which look like leather wallets. How strange the marvels 
which the ebbing tide reveals ! 

Outside, along the shore, are large areas of amber-colored 
kelp, with intervals of open space, where there is splendid 
trolling with a spoon for a fish of the genus Sebastichthys 
(S. melanops) locally known as " kelp-fish " and ''black sea- 
bass "; but they are not bass at all, although somewhat like 
the Micropterus of the East. Their play on the rod and line 
is not so vigorous, but upon the whole they answer very 
well as substitutes for the favorite game-fish of our eastern 
inland waters. Fishing for them after this method is better 
sport than hauling up their deep-sea kindred hand over 
hand, from hidden depths so many fathoms down that they 
come to the top drowned dead, with their eye-balls out of 
the sockets, and their air-bladders reversed and protruding 
from their gaping mouths. There are seven species of 
Chiridce, the largest of which — the " kultus cod " — reaches 
sixty pounds' weight. Indians troll for them with a strip of 
halibut belly-skin wound on a single hook. In such hours 
of pastime, life afloat is enlivened by watching the bird-life 
along shore — the enormous flocks of fish-crows which hang 
around the islands and visit chosen places regularly to per- 
form their ablutions and await the ebbing tide ; the solitary 
sand-pipers which run about the rocks, and the wisps of 
beach-birds which continually flit from cove to cove ; the 
black brant, which also have their stated feeding-places on 
the tidal flats, breeding here on the inshore lakes ; the bald 
eagles and ospreys, which sit in stately watch on the tallest 
firs or hover above the water spaces ; the big horned owls 
in the secluded shadows ; and the few little song birds 
which venture to lift their voices in this wilderness. Of the 
avifauna of Alaska the sea-fowl constitute by far the largest 



RA MBLES A L ONG SHORE. 1 5 9 

proportion, breeding on the rocks along the shore in count- 
less numbers, but other species find the coast too warm, and 
so prefer the wooded districts and moss " tundras " which 
lie between the Yukon and the Arctic Ocean. Of such are 
the snow goose, the white frorvted goose, the painted goose 
or wavy, the blue brant, and a majority of the ducks found 
on the coast in the seasons of their northward and south- 
ward migrations, among which may be included mergansers, 
harlequins, brown ducks, widgeon, sprig-tails, surf-ducks, 
canvas-backs, golden-eyes, oldwives, scoters, grebes, 
shufflers, butter-balls, scaups, and lesser-scaups, all of which 
remain in the vicinity of Sitka all winter, and fly north to 
their nesting-places early in March. Canada geese and 
mallards breed about the mountain lakes around Sitka. 
Green-winged teal and blue-winged teal winter further south. 
They are the first to come and the first to go in the fall. 
Puffins, guilemots, coots, sea-pigeons, shags, terns, petrels, 
hagden, and gulls are found in the south of Alaska, but they 
all breed further north. There is a fine showing of beach 
birds for variety, the list including golden-plover, upland- 
plover, Wilson snipe, gray snipe, semi-palmated snipe, least 
sand-piper, Baird's sand-piper, jack curlew, black-bellied 
sand-piper, ring-necks, and a rare kind of four-toed plover, 
some of which are found in immense congregations, so that 
fifty brace to a gun is no bag to mention. The flights of 
wild fowl from North Alaska follow the coast down to San 
Francisco and below, where they are so numerous that 
farmers pay men to shoot them off their wheat fields. Those 
which tarry or remain on the Alaskan coast afford great 
sport among the islands in the narrow channels where the 
kelp grows upon which they feed. Landing on the side 
opposite to where they are feeding, parties send the boat to 
stir them up, and the gunners, who have taken position, 
shoot them as they rise through the openings between the 
islands. 

Alaska is without doubt a fascinating field for the nat- 
uralist, as well as the fisherman, and also for summer vag- 
abondizing. I venture to say that in the near future it 
will become a favorite cruizing ground for steam yachts. 
Perhaps the American Canoe Association will like to make 
a trip to its land-locked waters next summer, and remain a 
month between steamers. 

If they should happen upon some of those inlets, into 
which the salmon crowd, and where there is no presence of 
man to disturb, they will not fail to discover the bears fish- 
ing. It is not even sport to bruin, for the fish get jammed 



1 60 OUR NEW ALA SKA. 

in so they can hardly move, and the bears have only to 
" scoop " them with their paws, and fill their bellies to 
satiety, after which, in berry time, they may take to the 
woods for their dessert. In some localities, close to the 
towns and villages, the bear-paths are plenty, and worn 
quite smooth, and I have been fooled more than once b)' 
following them to a terminus too abrupt to be pleasant. 
During the month of August the mosquitoes and flies are so 
blood-thirsty and persistent in the timber as to drive not 
only the deer, but the bears themselves to high altitudes. 
It is said that carcasses of dead bears have been found, 
that have manifestly perished by starvation, having been 
first blinded by the flies so that they could not forage. 
Once, in the province of New Brunswick, I remember to 
have seen a tame moose blinded in this way so that he was 
unable to find his way home, and only a timely rescue saved 
his life. In September the snow on the mountains drives 
the deer (black-tails) down to the water, and they swim con- 
stantly from the mainland to the islands, many of which are 
interspersed with grassy flats, where good grazing is found. 
They are then easily captured in transitu, often in pairs. 
Bears also are caught in the same way, the one on board 
the regular mail steamer having been picked up en voyage. 
There is fine deer-shooting about Wrangell, and some of 
the mission boys there once brought in forty as the result of 
a five days' hunt. A saddle of venison can be bought for a 
dollar at any time. 

The impenetrable jungle of the Alaskan forest, with its 
windfalls of timber and profusion of berries and succulent 
mosses, constitutes both a nursery and a protection for its 
fauna. It is a veritable paradise for bears, whom neither 
dogs nor men can reach, except at the very season when they 
" hole in " for the winter. The boldest and most practiced 
Indian is afraid to go into the woods for game, for fear of 
bears. There are bears enough in Alaska — grizzly,cinnamon, 
and black — to furnish every man on the Pacific with a cap 
and overcoat, and leave breeding stock enough for next year's 
supply. Besides, there is a small albino bear found on the 
coast, which is known as the coast bear. Being white, and 
a good deal about the ice in winter, some have supposed it 
to be a variety of polar bear, but the zoologists dispute it. 

Blue grouse, ruffed grouse, spruce grouse, and ptarmigan 
are very abundant, but hard to shoot, and difficult to gather 
when shot, by reason of the forest jungle. I have heard 
from those who are familiar with them, their descriptions of 
the grand scenery among the mountains, where crags and 



RAMBLES ALONG SHORE. 161 

rocky peaks were alternated with deep canons in which were 
located many beautiful lakes, fed by everlasting brooks, 
which found their origin in great glaciers and immense 
banks of perpetual snow; of lofty barren plateaus, where, 
on the bare rocks, ptarmigan were in profusion and of 
sky-parlors high above the timber line, where the mountain 
goats and sheep make their aerial home; but, as I have 
never reached the higher altitudes, and my own experience 
in mountain-climbing has been chiefly confined to beaten 
trails, I feel privileged to copy from one of Capt. Beard- 
slee's letters the record of a characteristic trip accomplished 
by himself when he had his " land tacks " in proper trim ; 
and so I quote : 

" Three-quarters of an hour carried us up a height of 
one thousand feet and a distance of three-quarters of a 
mile ; but we found, before the trip was finished, that three- 
quarters of an hour was, in some cases, a very moderate 
amount of time in which to advance a quarter of the dis- 
tance. When at each step the perpendicular gain is twenty, 
and the horizontal about three, inches, a mile is a long 
journey. The trail wound its way through a dense forest 
of great hemlocks and spruce trees, with a few yellow cedar. 
Many of the former were of such dimensions that a spot in 
the Adirondacks, so well covered, would, for its " bark " or 
" counts," prove very valuable. When we reached Bald 
Mountain, we had traveled three miles, and had ascended 
over three thousand feet. 

After the first sharp rise of a thousand feet, we had but 
little ascent for a long distance, the trail leading along a 
sharp ridge, or " hog-back," which, on each side, was flanked 
by deep ravines, way down in whose depths we could hear 
the rushing of waterfalls, and occasionally the click of the 
miners' picks, for they are prospecting in all directions ; but 
we could see nothing, for a dense fog filled the ravine and 
hid from us the grand mountain scenery which at this part 
of our journey we knew still towered above us. An 
occasional momentary clearing away of a small bit of the 
curtain gave us provoking and tantalizing peeps, but for an 
instant. Once a glacier, not far from us, cast loose from its 
moorings and went crashing down with thunderous noise. 
We were far above the timber ; our trail was no trail, for 
we trod on the primitive rock ; but there was no danger of 
our getting off from it, for it we could see, and nothing 
else. Before we had got out of the timber my siwash gave 
a low whistle and stopped. As I joined him he pointed to 
"chicken," and then, not forty feet away, I saw my first 



1 62 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

ptarmigan. There were four, and they ran behind a bush 
of low hemlock, or ground pine. I advanced slowly, ready 
to take them as they rose ; but they wouldn't rise, and 
dodged in and around that clump like a woodpecker around 
a tree. So at last, satisfying the sportsman part of my con- 
science by resolving to aim only at their heads, I let go at a 
couple, who were in line, and killed them, the other falling 
to my friend's shot, as he rose at last. The birds were 
simply beautiful ; their backs and tail feathers were like 
those of our ruffed grouse ; their wings and breasts pure 
white. 

There seems to be two varieties of this bird. Those found 
at this level are as I have described ; higher up they are 
nearly snow white, with black tail feathers bordered with 
white, and the dark feathers of the back, instead of as with 
those found lower down, being brown grouse-colored and 
predominating, are nearly black, and simply amount to spots, 
for each dark feather is surrounded with white. They may 
be the same bird, at different stages of transformation. 
They weigh about a pound each (six averaged fifteen and 
one-half ounces, the heaviest weighing eighteen), and are 
very delicious, especially at this season, when their food is 
almost altogether huckleberries ; later they feed on spruce 
and other bitter food, and their flavor suffers. They are 
very tender. No. 7 shot were very killing, and it was 
impossible to preserve a good specimen. The feathers 
came out in handsful, as they were gathered, and our dog's 
mouth looked as though he had the hydrophobia, so 
thoroughly blood-and-feathered was it. In skinning, the 
skin tore like wet blotting-paper, and an attempt to carry 
one by the leg involved a fracture of the same, if held at any 
angle. They are full-blooded, bleed a great deal, and, I 
should judge, very hot-blooded, for they spread themselves 
in great flocks on the surface of the snow patches, with 
wings extended, as hens when dusting themselves. They 
have a peculiar call, a grating sound, which often betrayed 
to us their vicinity when the fog was too dense for us to see 
them. As we got above the snow we could get a view of a 
portion of the banks nearest to us, and saw on it many 
birds, but we soon learned that it was mere slaughter to 
shoot them, or any flying over, for they would go sliding 
and plunging into the abyss below, and our siwashes could 
not be persuaded to trust themselves on to the snow, for 
they feared the starting of the glacier. 

" We arrived at the summit of this part of the mountains 
at about 4:30, and it was clear enough for us to obtain a 



RAMBLES ALONG SHORE. 165 

splendid view of Bald Mountain Peak, a few hundred feet 
above us, and at our feet, a thousand feet below, two beau- 
tiful lakes on terraces, connected by a stream, near which 
we saw the cabins of the Witch miners, their arastra and 
their mine some hundred feet up the opposite wall of the 
canon. The second day the fog had turned into rain, but 
we were as determined as the youth who "bore, mid snow 
and ice," etc., and determined to go on and up, for beyond 
and above us were ledges and birds well worth going for." 

A recital of the remainder of the ascent would be chiefly 
a repetition, but clambering among the rocks is far less 
severe than tracking through the woods. There are those 
who make it a business to hunt the wild goats in these 
rough and almost inaccessible regions, and the number of 
these animals killed must be very considerable to supply 
the quantity of wool used in making the native blankets 
and the horns for the manufacture of the many utensils and 
ornaments in common use. Their pelts handsomely dressed, 
are employed as floor rugs and bedding, and of late 
many entire specimens as well as heads, have been stuffed 
and mounted for museums and private collections. Until 
comparatively recent years, very little accurate knowledge 
of the habits of the mountain goat was possessed even by 
well informed naturalists. It was often confounded with 
the bighorn sheep, or when referred to, assumed to be 
identical with it. At present, however, little remains to 
discover, and it is, moreover, believed that in Alaska there 
are not only one but two distinct species. The maximum 
of the larger variety is fully 150 pounds. Its range is 
from Montana to the extreme limit of the Alaskan chains, 
though specimens are said to have been met with as far 
south as northern Colorado. These goats are still in con- 
siderable numbers in Washington Territory, no less than 
six of them having been shot on Mt. Ranier by a single 
party in the summer of 1884. In British Columbia they 
are abundant, even in the southern portion. I have before 
me the photographed result, taken in camp, of a single 
day's shoot, on the Coast Range in the district of New 
Westminster, which shows six goats to three guns, besides 
three black bears and one grizzly. It is a long-bodied, 
humpbacked animal, standing fully thirty inches high, not 
at all like the domestic sheep in shape or fleece, with very 
long hair, except on the face and legs, which is underlaid by 
a fine, soft, thick wool, the whole coat being of a snow- 
white color. The chin is ornamented with a beard-like tuft 
of long hair, as in the common goat. The horns are six 



1 66 OUR NE W ALA SKA. 

to eight inches long, awl-shaped, ringed at the base and 
bending slightly backward. These, like the hoofs, are 
shining black, like polished ebony, and for *handles of 
spoons, forks, etc., make beautiful ornaments when skillfully 
carved. Notwithstanding its name, this animal is regarded 
as an antelope by naturalists, and not a goat at all. Its 
true home is among the loftiest peaks of the snow-clad 
mountains, above timber line, where no vegetation grows 
save mosses, lichens and a few alpine shrubs and grasses. 
I have met those who liked the flavor of its meat when 
young, but generally it is not esteemed. It is usually killed 
by a method of hunting known as stalking, and the regula- 
tion outfit of a native would be a belted shirt of squirrel- 
skin, a grotesque head-dress made of fur, close seal-skin 
bootees laced half way to the knee, old-time spears to serve 
as alpen-stocks, bows and arrows, raw-hide ropes and Hud- 
son Bay rifles. Up on the ridges back of Mt. St. Elias, 
which constitute a favorite hunting-ground for goats, is 
found a bear similar to the " roach-back " or "silver-tip " 
of the Rockies, but of a beautiful bluish under-color, with 
the tips of the long hairs silvery white. The traders call it 
" St. Elias silver bear." 

The range of the bighorn sheep extends much further 
south than the goats, even to the mountains of Arizona on 
the south, as well as to the sphagnous barrens of the 
north. Its habitat is by no means confined to high 
altitudes, much less summits, though it is restricted to 
rough regions. It delights in table-lands and dry mesas, 
not so much for the precarious pickings of their scant 
vegetation as for the outlook they afford against sur- 
prises from enemies. Up to six years ago it was not 
unusual to shoot them on the Yellowstone river-bluffs from 
decks of passing steamers, the land back of the bluffs 
being broken, but by no means mountainous. Stalking the 
mountain sheep is extremely delicate work, requiring much 
finesse, but as game the animal may be regarded more 
valuable than the goat, since it affords not only pelt 
and fleece, but estimable mutton and horns of much 
value for dishes and sundry domestic utensils. Not nearly 
so many of these are killed as goats in Alaska ; indeed the 
latter are undoubtedly far the most numerous of the two. 
Alaska seems to be the ultimate preserve of their breed, 
which it will be a pity to exterminate without an effort at 
domestication. The sheep is much the larger animal, 
reaching upward of 200 pounds in weight. It has been 
aptly described as having the head of a sheep and the body 



RA MBLES A L ONG SHORE. 1 6 7 

of a deer. The horns of the male are marvelously 
immense, curving backward and outward until they form a 
circle whose circumference may reach three feet. Such a 
horn would measure six inches in diameter at the base, and 
make a dish which, when split, steamed, spread and shaped, 
would measure almost a foot in width, with length to suit. 
The horns are often badly splintered as the result of fight- 
ing, but not from pitching headlong over precipices, accord- 
ing to hunters' fables. The female horn is much smaller and 
nearly erect, with very little backward curve, a fact which will 
readily account for their being confounded with mountain 
goats by inexperienced persons who perhaps never saw them 
except at a distance. The color, however, should readily dis- 
tinguish the two, as the sheep in summer area wood-brown, 
and often darker, while in winter they are never pure white 
like the goats. The legs and belly, however, and a portion 
of the buttocks are white. In spring the old rams are a 
dingy white. Outwardly the coat is stiff and wire-haired, 
not half the length of the goat's, but it is underlaid by a 
fine, thick wool. Successful hunters stalk them in the 
early morning when they are feeding low down, after first 
having climbed convenient heights to reconnoiter. When 
a herd is discovered, the most cautious, patient and wily 
hunter, who takes a judicious advantage of such inequali- 
ties of the land as favor his approaching unobserved, will 
bring in the most meat. At noon the sheep retire to the 
sky-parlors for rumination and siestas. 



THE GLACIER FIELDS. 



The excursion steamer which makes its monthly trips 
from Portland, Oregon, to Sitka and beyond, cruises along 
a thousand miles of Alaskan coast. No fewer than six large 
glaciers can be seen, including the Davidson, Sundown, 
Brady, Patterson, Taku, and Muir. The foot of the Brady 
glacier, in Taylor Bay, is estimated to be from four to six 
miles wide. It has not been visited much and no measure- 
ments have been made ; but on a clear day not only it and 
its well defined moraine, but the magnificent Fairweather 
group of mountains, sixteen thousand feet high, with La 
Perouse and Crillon, in which so many glaciers take their 
rise, are all in full view. A more magnificent sight is rarely 
seen, and those who have had opportunities in Europe say 
that there is nothing to compare with it there, certainly in 
purely glacial scenery. The Muir and Davidson glaciers 
are spurs or outflows of the same ice-field, which has an 
unbroken expanse of four hundred miles — large enough to 
lie over the whole domain of Switzerland. The Muir is the 
ultimate objective point of sight-seers, who, by the time they 
have become accustomed to the unfamiliar blending of 
Mediterranean with Alpine scenery so exclusively charac- 
teristic of the North Pacific coast, are partially prepared for 
the astounding revelation which presently awaits them at 
the head of Glacier Bay. This bay is about one hundred 
and twenty miles north-east of Sitka, and lies in latitude 
fifty-nine degrees and twenty minutes. It is, therefore, the 
most northern point reached on the regular trips of the 
excursion steamers. Sitka has yet to be visited, but 
that polyglot settlement lies south. It occupies a secondary 
place in the anticipations of those whose conceptions of a 
glacier have been inspired by visions or readings of the 
Matterhorn or Rhone. Briefly this whole region is full of 
glaciers, although under the fervid sun of July it would 
seem as if every thing in the shape of ice and snow would 
speedily melt. 

Until a comparatively recent period, glacial dynamics 
have remained to a certain extent a matter of theory. The 



THE GLACIER FIELDS. 1 69 

birth of an iceberg is said to be a phenomenon unknown in 
Europe. On that continent the glacial force is almost spent, 
and he who would witness the mighty outcome of its latent 
power must seek it on the confines of the New World. He 
will not find it in the fastnesses of Switzerland. There the 
once overwhelming accumulations of snow, which filled the 
mountain valleys to the level of their topmost peaks, no 
longer supply the glacial streams with material for bergs. 
The ice-fields have dwindled to insignificant areas, and 
their discharge is, for the most part, fluvial, though much of 
their bulk is dissipated by evaporation or absorption into 
the warm earth of the lower altitudes. But in Greenland, 
which has recently been investigated by Danish explorers, 
the ice-fields were found to cover the country like a pall for 
one thousand five hundred miles from Cape Farewell to the 
furthest discovered point, and their breadth is absolutely 
unknown. Out of the almost interminable waste of frigid 
desolation pours the great glacier Sermitsialik, with a width 
of from two to four miles, completely occupying the valley 
out of which it debouches to the depth of two thousand feet 
or more. It is only one of hundreds of similar frozen rivers, 
all of which, as far as is known, are pigmies beside the great 
Humboldt glacier discovered by Dr. Kane at the head of 
Smith Sound. This is sixty miles in width, with inclosing 
walls of rock a thousand feet high. Its front abuts the sea, 
and is washed by the waves like any other coast line. 

From these Titanic sources of perpetual supply are 
emitted those stupendous icebergs which fill the north 
Atlantic from June to August to such an extent that dozens 
can be counted from the masthead within the scope of view. 
The dimensions of some of them are incredible. I have 
seen one off the coast of Labrador which was estimated to 
be two miles long and three hundred feet high ; and this 
great mass was sloughed off entire from the Humboldt Sea 
wall with one tremendous cleavage, plunge, and surge, as a 
great ship leaves the ways. Such mountains of ice are per- 
petually falling all along the line, with an intermittent crash 
and roar like the tumult of a tempest. The din of the great 
commotion can be heard for miles ; and even after they are 
adrift in the warmer currents of more southern latitudes 
where they melt and diminish by the sea's erosion, they 
are constantly turning over and over in the effort to keep 
their balance, and the noise and commotion of the heaving 
waters is heard for distances of miles. The Esquimaux, it 
is told by the Danish explorers, regard all this as the work 
of evil spirits, and believe that to look upon these 



170 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

agonizing throes is death ; so, while they were innocently- 
observing their phenomena through their glasses, the timid 
natives, usually circumspect enough, roughly ordered them 
to turn their backs ! 

The glaciers of the North Pacific are much smaller in 
comparison with those of Greenland, but the Muir is three 
miles long, with a perpendicular face of four hundred feet, 
stretching like a frozen waterfall or gigantic dam entirely 
across the head of the bay. Its breast is as blue as tur- 
quoise. At a distance it looks like a fillet rent from the 
azure sky and laid across the brow of the cliff. AVhen the 
full blaze of the south-western sun lights up its opalescence, 
it gleams like the gates of the celestial city. I suppose that 
an iceberg of no insignificant size is sloughed off from some 
portion of its sea wall as often as once in five minutes, 
but these detachments seldom represent more than a limited 
section, and most of them break up into comparatively 
small fragments before they are fairly launched on their 
seaward journey. It is an axiom that mechanical forces 
are best comprehended by their products ; so that no one 
can begin to realize what a stupendous factor a glacier 
is until he sees the measure of its infinite power thus made 
supremely manifest. Visitors are told that glaciers move 
at the rate of so many feet or inches daily. Ocular evidence 
maybe obtained by fixed landmarks, which indicate a stated 
progression. From the size and frequency of the cleavages 
here it would seem that the progress of the Muir must be 
several rods a day, though an estimate can only be ap- 
proximated, as there is no true alignment, and the center 
moves faster than the sides. 

Long before the steamer reaches the entrance of Glacier 
Bay straggling lumps of ice appear, dazzling white, and 
resting like blocks of marble on the polished sea, which is 
scarcely moved by an imperceptible swell pulsating through 
the Sound. The sun is warm and grateful, and the sky 
without a cloud, excepting those which stretch like filmy 
gauze from peak to peak, the temperature perhaps 60 de- 
grees in the shade. Half of the passengers have never 
seen an ice-cake, and they are eager with excitement to get 
nearer the polar videttes which are drifting by, away off 
under the land. The course of the vessel bears gradually 
toward the headland at the entrance, and the lumps of ice 
become more numerous. Bevies of ladies rush to the taff- 
rail as one of them passes close under the counter. Pres- 
ently a passing promontory opens out a large iceberg of 
fantastic shape, and then another, tall and stately, with 



THE GLACIER FIELDS. 171 

turrets like a castle. Sea gulls, hagden and shags hover 
about their gleaming walls like snow-flakes in the air, or 
sit in solemn ranks upon the battlements. Objects change 
positions constantly, and countermarch across the field of 
view. Fancies dissolve before they are formed. Reflections 
from the land appear in darksome shades across the water, 
and from the looming icebergs in tremulous semblances, 
ghost-like and pallid. The scenic effects, at once so mag- 
ical and duplicated everywhere, grow momentarily more 
weird. 

Meantime, the steamer slacks her headway, slows down, 
and presently with a sullen thud, lies alongside a small 
berg, whose rounded apex peers up over the deadeyes into 
the head of the companionway, looking for all the world as 
if it was going to come aboard. All the curious ladies pipe 
a combination scream, and make for the door of the cap- 
tain's stateroom. Then the quarter boat is swung out of 
the davits and lowered away ; and the steward and the 
mate and the sailors tackle the glistening harlequin with 
pikes and axes, and, after much chopping and maneuvering 
with bights and bowlines, contrive to split off a big lump, 
and hoist it inboard with a sling. This supply is for the 
ice-chest. How pure, and cold, and beautiful, and trans- 
parent it is ! How precious to passengers who have been 
for two days stinted, and to the steward whose meat was 
likely to spoil ! The chunks cut off seem colorless, but the 
central core of the berg itself glows like a great blue eye, 
sentient and expressive, with that sort of poetical light 
termed " spirtuelle" You never tire of gazing into the 
translucent depths of the glacier ice, whose radiance emu- 
lates the blue and green of beryl, turquoise, chrysoprase and 
emerald. You gaze into them as into the arcana of the 
empyrean, with some vague awe of their mysterious source, 
and the intangible causes which gave them birth. And 
the grand icebergs ! — so cold, yet so majestic ; so solid, yet 
so unsubstantial ; so massive, yet so ethereal ! — whose bas- 
tions are mighty enough to shiver an onset, and yet so vola- 
tile that the warmth of wooing spring will dissipate them 
into vapor. Children of the Arctic frost, conceived in the 
upper air, inspired by the effulgent sun, and molded in 
the bowels of intensest congelation : the human mind can 
not contemplate them without a sympathetic inspiration, for 
their duplex entity is so like our combination of soul and 
body ! 

Who will tell me what paints the ice-bergs, and gives the 
sky its blue; colors the depths of the ocean, and imparts to 



172 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

Niagara its hues of intensest green ? Behind an intelligi- 
ble explanation lies the revelation which all men wish to 
know. Let us wait. 

A stiff breeze was blowing as we entered Glacier Bay, 
and the breath came bitterly cold from off the ice field. 
The bay was filled with floating bergs and floes, and the 
temperature dropped quite rapidly to 46 degrees. The 
ruffled surface of the water assumed that peculiar tinge of 
cold steel-gray which landscapes wear in winter. The at- 
mosphere put on a sympathetic hue and grew perceptibly 
denser. Snow covered all the peaks, and the mer de glace 
spread out before us like a great white apron on the lap of 
the mountain. It is twelve miles from the entrance to 
the head of the bay, and over the entire landscape nature 
seemed dead. Not a living thing appeared — not a gull on 
the wing, nor a seal in the gloomy fiords. Desolation 
reigned throughout, for there was nothing to sustain life. 
The creation was all new, and the glacier was still at work 
gradually preparing it for the abode of organic life. Dark- 
ness only was needed to relegate us to the primordium of 
chaos. But the sun was bright on the distant peaks, which 
inclosed the bay on all sides, and their intangible, ghostly 
outlines, scarcely distinguished from the fleecy clouds 
about them, seemed indefinitely beyond the convex line 
of earth. Seldom are mundane gloom and supernal glory 
contrasted by such startling juxtaposition. 

As the steamer neared the glacier, speculations began 
respecting the height of its perpendicular front, but no one 
guessed higher than the vessel's topmast. It was only 
when she lay anchored in ninety fathoms of water, close 
under the ice, and not a quarter of a mile from shore, that 
spectators began to conceive the magnitude of the glacier 
and all its surroundings. The glacier wall overhung us 
with its mighty majesty, three times the height of the 
steamer's mast, or more, and we seemed none too far away 
to escape the constantly cleaving masses which dropped 
from its face with deafening detonations. The foam 
which gathered from the impetus of the plunges surged up- 
ward fully two-thirds of the height of the cliff, and the 
resulting swell tossed the large steamer like a toy, and 
rolled up in breakers of surf upon the beach. The vessel 
was in actual danger from the fragments of ice which occa- 
sionally thumped against her sides. Indeed, her wheels were 
afterward badly mashed in making her way out of the bay 
into open water. A paddle-wheel steamer is unfit for such 
navigation, and I suppose a propeller will be used hereafter. 



THE GLACIER FIELDS. 173 

The glacier wall is by no means smooth, but is seamed 
and riven in every part by clefts and fissures. It is hol- 
lowed into caverns and grottoes, hung with massive stalac- 
tites, and fashioned into pinnacles and domes. Every sec- 
tion and configuration has its heart of translucent blue or 
green, interlaced or bordered by fretted frost-work of 
intensest white; so that the appearance is at all times 
gnome-like and supernatural. No portion of the wall ever 
seems to pitch forward all at once in a sheer fall from top 
to bottom, but sections split off from the buttresses, or 
drop from midway, or the top. The apparent slowness of 
their descent is sublimity itself, because it carries with it 
the measure of its stupendous vastness and inappreciable 
height. 

Impressions of magnitude and majesty, I opine, are not 
conveyed so much by any relative standard of comparison 
as by the degree with which we come within the range of 
their power or influence. One must realize before he can 
appreciate, and he can not realize fully untif he becomes to 
a certain extent a participator. Proximity shudders and 
trembles at what remoteness and impunity view with dis- 
passionate equanimity. I can not conceive how any one 
can sit close by and contemplate without emotion the stu- 
pendous throes which give birth to the icebergs, attended 
with detonations like explosions of artillery, and reverber- 
ations of thunder across the sky, and the mighty wreckage 
which follows each convulsion. Nevertheless, I have seen 
a lady loll with complaisance in her steamer chair, com- 
fortably wrapped from the chilly air, and observe the 
astounding scene with the same languid contemplation that 
she would discuss her social fixtures and appointments. 
Zounds ! I believe that such a human negation would 
calmly view the wreck of worlds, and hear the crack of 
doom at the final rendering, if it did not affect " her set." 
She could watch at a suitable distance the agonies of 
Christian martyrs; the carnage of great battles ; the sweep 
of cyclones; and diluvial submergence. Dynamite would 
not appall her — but to me it would be the acme of satis- 
faction, ineffably supreme, to startle such clods of in- 
anition by a cry of " mouse," and electrify them into a 
momentary emotion. No vinaigrette would ever mitigate 
the shock. 

I say, one can not estimate the magnitude of these glacial 
phenomena by contiguous objects, because they are all un- 
familiar. The steamer itself, although considerable in size, 
seems like an atom. As for the rest, the fragments of ice 



x 7 4 OUR NEW ALA SKA. 

which are seen stranded along the beach, looking no larger 
than blocks, measure twelve feet high. Those lumps drift- 
ing past yonder fiord are icebergs higher than our topmast. 
The other side of the bay which, we imagine, one could swim 
across with ease, is five miles off. The ice ledge itself is 
four hundred feet high. The peaks in the distance, forty 
miles away, are sixteen thousand feet above the level of the 
sea. There is the Devil's Thumb, looking no higher than 
the Washington Monument, a sheer monolith six thousand 
feet high, with faces almost perpendicular. The timber 
line around the feet of the distant ranges resembles a cinc- 
ture of moss. 

From a pinnacle of elevation overlooking the Muir ice 
field, which is obtained by an arduous half day's climb, 
although some expected to accomplish it in an hour, one can 
count no less than fifteen tributary glacial streams, any one 
of which is as large as the great Rhone glacier. 

Drawn from the inexhaustible but annually diminishing 
accumulations of snow which fill the mountain valleys to a 
d^pth of at least 2,000 feet, these separate streams of plastic 
congelation unite like the strands of a rope to form the 
irresistible current of the Muir. The surface of the glacier 
is not uniformly level and smooth like a boulevard. It has 
its drifts and dykes, its cascades, riffs, and rapids, like any 
unfrozen river. In the immediate front, and extending a 
mile or more back, its whole surface is the most rugged 
formation imaginable. It is utterly impossible for any 
living creature to traverse it, being in fact a compacted 
aggregation of wedge-shaped and rounded cones of solid ice, 
capped by discolored and disintegrating snow. But away 
back in the mountain passes it is easily traversed with sledges 
or snow shoes. Indians cross the divide at sundry places 
all along the coast from the Stickeen to Copper River. 

Looking afar off into the blank perspective the icy re-en- 
forcements which pour out of the mountain fastnesses like 
gathering clans seem compacted into indefinable fleecy 
masses, while in the immediate van they pass in review in 
serried phalanxes of cowled and hooded monks twenty feet 
tall, wrapped in dirty toques and capuchins, snow powdered, 
and bedraggled, and pressing forward with never-ceasing 
march, as if all the life-long denizens of the Gothard and 
St. Bernard had set out at once to temper their frigid tongues 
in the tepid waters which are warmed by the Kuro-Siwo. 
In other places, where the mer-de-glace is level like a plain, 
its surface i<s seamed with deep crevasses and slashed with 
rifts and chasms whose sides and walls deep down for sixty 



THE GLACIER FIELDS. 1 75 

feet are dazzling blue. Thus the incipient bergs are split 
and carved and chiseled and prepared for their final segre- 
gation, so that they will break off easily when they reach 
the front. 

Meantime the sub-glacial river which is flowing under- 
neath buoys up the ice and floats it to the sea. It is esti- 
mated, by soundings made as near as vessels dare approach, 
that it is fully eight hundred feet deep. The water flows 
beneath the glacier, just as it does under the deposit of a 
snow-laden roof, forming icicles at the eaves. To this 
mighty channel, between its flanking slopes of rock, the 
glacier is at last restricted. Evidences are abundant that it 
is continually receding. They are scored high up on the 
abutting rocks by the adamantine ice. They are attested by 
the stranded debris of the lateral moraines, and recorded 
in the written narratives of Vancouver, who speaks of his 
inability to enter this bay in 1793, which is now navigable 
for twelve miles inland. Once the ice-field was level with 
the distant mountain tops ; now it has settled, with melting 
and thaw, until the peaks are far above the surface. The 
annual accumulations are dissolving and diminishing faster 
than they can be replenished, and centuries hence snow will 
no longer be perpetual in the valleys. The warm hills will 
throw off their useless mantle, and nothing will remain of 
the Muir glacier except a goodly stream and some tribu- 
tary rills leaping with a musical cadence from the vernal 
melting among the peaks. The deep and cavernous gully 
which now retains the sub-glacial outflow of the ice-field 
will become an estuary of the ocean, and the legend of the 
Muir will be illustrated in parti-colored tapestry lining the 
verdant slopes and meadows with flowers and foliage. Per- 
haps some goodly village will nestle at the terminal moraine, 
as it now does in the Matterhorn among the Alps. Then all 
the soil deposited in the valleys and upon the hillsides will tell 
us of the wear and tear which even now is grinding down 
the mountains, of the denudation, pulverizing, leveling, and 
filling up of which the glacier has been the potent agent 
since the world began. 

Glaciers always carry on their frozen tide great bowlders 
and masses of stones and rock wrenched from the mountain 
sides, just as rivers carry logs and drift. Whatever is not 
deposited along its course is carried out to sea by the ice- 
bergs to strew the ocean bottom, precisely as we find them 
on our Western plains, where they were deposited when the 
salt waves covered their unlimited expanse. 

Some of the lateral moraines (as the dry beds of spent 



176 OUR NEW ALA SRA. 

glacial outlets are termed) are still underlaid by an ice 
stratum 200 feet thick, which became detached from the 
main body of the glacier many decades since. It will take 
a half century to melt it. Clambering over these is no 
child's play. Visitors should be prepared with waterproof 
anglers' wading trowsers and alpen-stocks and hob-nail 
shoes, leaving all top coats and superfluous wraps where 
they can be resumed after the jaunt is finished. Rubber 
shoes or boots are liable to be torn to shreds. There are 
spots, looking like solid earth, which often prove to be mud- 
holes of uncertain depth. Bowlders are everywhere — 
bowlders, ice, and slimy silt, or till, and nothing else. Bot- 
tomless crevasses head you off at every turn. To land dry- 
shod from the boats is not easy, on account of the surf. 

Altogether, it is astonishing what a minimum of distance 
or altitude one can accomplish with a maximum of clamber- 
ing and perspiration, even with the chill wind blowing fresh ; 
for every object sought is at least five times the distance 
guessed at, and the road is hard, indeed, to travel. Never- 
theless, the ladies are generally foremost, and old Swiss 
explorers will distance all the rest. 

It is a consolation and a comfort, when on the apex of 
the moraine, with the polar desolation all around, and every 
resource of succor or deliverance clean cut off, to look far 
down upon the little object which is our only hope — the 
steamer, which seems an atom more than ever — and know 
that although the bay be filled with floes, there is open water 
and safety and genial climate just beyond, and that 
no hopeless Arctic winters intervene. By some trivial 
accident, possible enough, a party of excursionists might be 
left in a situation almost as hopeless as the hapless sufferers 
of the Lena. The perils are precisely the same, modified 
only by the relative accessibility of succor, and therefore too 
much stress can not be laid upon the stanchness of the ves- 
sels sent into the ice. 

Last winter the citizens of St. Paul instituted an ice-palace 
and illuminated it with electric lights, and all the heavenly 
planets lent their aid to make it resplendent. At night 
when the full moon shone upon its crystal walls and battle- 
ments, and their translucence was reflected, it looked more 
like an ethereal creation than one of substance. It was 
stately in its magnificence and overwhelming in its super- 
natural majesty. But what shall compare with the Muir 
glacier when the moonlight is upon it, and all the phosphor- 
escence of the Pacific Ocean beats in billows of liquid flame 
against its toppling, crumbling walls ? When lunar rainbows 



THE GLACIER FIELDS. 177 

are tossed in air against the mounting columns of foam 
that are shivered into spray by the plunging mountains of 
ice ? In the everlasting tumult, and whirl, and crash of 
explosions which seem to split the glacier itself from front 
to mountain source, when nothing at all takes definite shape 
upon the ghostly interchange of lights and shades, one can 
imagine only the revels of chaos and the scroll rolled back 
to the genesis of creation. 



RUSSIA IN AMERICA. 



It is a "great day" for sleepy Sitka when the steamer 
comes up to her wharf and makes fast. The whole town 
rubs its eyes and turns out. 

Ever since the previous sailing day, when the last box of 
freight was leisurely trundled into the warehouse, it has 
been supremely quiet. There has been absoltuely nothing 
to do. The government vessels are off on duty ; the miners 
away at the diggings ; the fishing season over ; half the ten- 
ements vacant ; no entries nor clearance at the custom house ; 
the governor is sticking type in his printing office ; and the 
attorneys are matching kopecks to see who shall win the 
next case. Down at the Indian " ranch " the dogs are dozing 
in the sun ; occasionally a Siwash will stroll to the beach, 
and straighten out the mats which cover his canoe ; a few of 
the mission boys at the far end of the village come in to 
visit their low-down relations ; groups of ravens are picking 
offal out of the landwash ; a few cows graze on the parade ; 
the black balls of the signal office anemometer scarcely turn 
in the wind. 

Meanwhile the melting snow from the mountains trickles 
unceasingly into the sea, and the process of decay eats into 
the solid timbers of the old houses vacated by the Russians ; 
the rickety wharf all deserted, steams in the humid atmos- 
phere, and the teredos bore insidiously into the piles below 
the water line. 

The last time the steamer made fast to the dock, her stern- 
line pulled off a section of the worm-eaten piling, and the 
splash woke up a couple of Siwashes who had been dozing 
against the side of the warehouse ever since the trip 
before. 

But " steamer day is an event." Then every thing is dif- 
ferent. The stars and stripes are run up from the marine 
barracks and customhouse ; all the public offices are open ; 
the marshal is on the qui vive, and the attorneys have two 
pens behind each ear ; the war vessel comes into port ; the 
governor shaves and cleans up to receive his guests ; tawdry 
klootchmen open up their basket-work, berries and curios 



RUSSIA IN AMERICA. 1 79 

at eligible stands ; and the distracted post-master is "just 
too busy for any thing ; " even the cows on the parade are 
too curious to graze for looking at the stir. 

As soon as the brass gun of the expected vessel booms 
among the islands of the bay, the wharf is crowded. There 
are just 300 white people in town, and that is enough to 
make a crowd. If the wharf should give way, it would en- 
gulf the whole population — Siwashes excepted. There are 
no drays nor omnibuses nor wagons to be seen, for there are 
none in town, and only one horse to draw them ; no hotel 
runners, for there are no hotels ; no loud voiced newsboys, 
for there is but one paper in the place, and the editor is too 
modest to have it hawked under his nose ; no boot-blacks, 
no policemen, no peanut-vendors, no little flower-girls, no 
any thing that one might expect to see at the chief com- 
mercial port of one of the biggest territories in the world.* 
A few impatient passengers get ashore before the gang- 
plank is laid, and perhaps ten minutes later the entire com- 
plement of sightseers is scattered about the town. Into the 
Grseco-Russian church with its green-painted minaret and 
dome ; into the museum of the marine barracks where there is 
a collection of native curios which makes collectors envious ; 
up to the " castle " on an eminence, which was once the 
pretentious residence of the governors ; out to the Indian 
"ranch " along the shore front, and to the Indian mission on 
the curve of the beach, in the opposite direction ; up to the 
queer looking cemeteries on the ridge, white and native ; 
and to the old block-houses and the stockade, and trading 
stores, the public offices and the photograph gallery. In- 
deed there is " lots " to see in Sitka, and one can remain 
over one steamer and spend a month most agreeably, ex- 
tending his observations to the environs, and for miles 
around. Miners and toughs who come by every steamer, 
camp out in gipsy fashion, or roll up in their blankets in 
some of the vacant rooms in the barn-like dilapidated gov- 
ernment buildings, but fair boarding places can be found 
by sojourners after a little inquiry. At the stores one can 
buy almost any thing which is to be found at Victoria or 
Portland. Washing is done by the Russian families. There 
is no physician in the place except the naval surgeon, and 

* A hotel, a restaurant and a private boarding-house have been 
opened since this chapter was written. Besides the Indian Mission 
School there is a public school for whites with forty-one pupils. There 
are five attorneys and a news depot. Eighty-two letters were advertised 
in the local paper for the month of May. Religious services are held by 
the Greek, Catholic and Protestant denominations. Sitka is waking up. 



180 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

it occurs to the author that a fine opportunity is offered 
for a worthy disciple of ^Esculapius to establish himself in a 
good business at Sitka, as the native Alaskans need the 
services of a physician to an alarming extent. 

During the twenty-four hours which the steamer is re- 
quired by contract to remain in port, although she frequent- 
ly stays two days, all the elite of the town — the " leading 
ladies," the Creoles, the pure blood Russians, and the better 
Klootchmen, crowd aboard to see their metropolitan sisters, 
and inspect the latest fashions ; the merchants and officials 
obtain their mail matter and invoices ; the naval officers " see 
the boys " and receive their magazines and newspapers ; 
if there is any fresh beef or fruit to spare, it is immediately 
bespoken. Meanwhile the busy Siwashes on the dock are 
unremittingly trundling freight, and small knots of privi- 
leged rustics wander all over the ship and inspect her fittings 
and machinery. Sometimes there is opportunity to make 
side excursions to points of interest, in respect to which the 
blue jackets are of essential service, as they have a steam 
launch and light boats and are always hospitable. Festivi- 
ties, too, are in order, and invitations are issued for a 
" grand ball " at the castle, sans ceremonie, toilets at discre- 
tion. The invitations are general, for the shore community 
is not large enough to cut up into castes. If it were crit- 
ically culled there wouldn't be waltzers enough to go round, 
for the American population, all told, is but sixty. So 
the floor is sifted over with spermaceti shavings, and an old 
brass relic of a Russian chandelier is filled with candles and 
hung up, while a couple of marines or waiters from the mail 
steamer do excellent duty as musicians with banjo and ac- 
cordeon. Slips and mishaps never mar such an occasion — 
never ; they embellish it. " Select your Klootchmen! " and 
" swing your Siwash! " fill up the measure of shuffling feet, 
and the ball succeeds until the antiquated dust of all the 
Romanoffs is stirred. 'Twas ever thus in the ancient days, 
I'm told ; for even then, no crucial distinctions could be 
made if the necessary components of a ball would be forth- 
coming. But alas! not a vestige of the old glory remains 
to illuminate the dark bare walls. Desolation reigns through- 
out the empty halls, and the wind whistles mournfully 
through dozens of broken panes. Not a tenant holds the 
venerable places in the castle except the U. S. signal man 
aloft who keeps his lonely vigils in the cupola on the roof. 
Up there, in the government sky parlor, the faithful 
chronicler of the storms clings to his weather-beaten post. 
Nothing moves him. Politics may change, civil service 



R US SI A IN A ME RICA . 1 8 1 

reform may fail, silver coinage be repealed, or the rookery 
itself collapse and fall! Whatever may betide, blow hot, blow 
cold, whichever way the vane may turn, the four little cups 
on the top of his tripod go round and round in the unremit- 
ting whirligig of time. 

In Sitka and northward, revelers, owls, and such, find 
small indulgence for orgies claimed for hours of darkness, 
for the sun is bright at 3 o'clock A.M., and he goes home 
early who goes " when daylight doth appear." In the longest 
days there is no interval of night so dark that all the stars 
are seen. Only the brightest of the planets outvie the 
twilight. So, long before the " wee sma' hours do come " 
the candles have burned down in their sockets, and the 
dancers in the castle repair to the parade for an Indian 
performance on the grass ; or sometimes there is a wedding 
in the church. Once in a while the fire company turns out 
for review, 48 men strong, with hose-cart, fire engine, and 
tin buckets improvised from oil cans. 

I doubt if there is a more enchanting site in the world 
than Sitka's. It has been compared with Naples ; but 
Naples, though serenely sweet, is not so massive, nor near so 
grand. In the varied combination of its picturesque envi- 
ronment Sitka is both placid and stupendous, benignant and 
majestic, alluring and severe. It entices while it warns. It 
gathers its beautiful brood of verdant islets into its arms 
and folds them tenderly to its bosom, while momentarily it 
frowns in awful majesty from the beetling heights above. 
Behind is a battlement of snow-clad mountains. Volcanic 
peaks flank the range at either end — Edgecumbe and Vos- 
tovia — lifted high against the firmament of blue, and welted 
with great red ridges of hardened lava which radiate from 
their pure white tops — the contrast of colors showing aloft 
with striking effect. Edgecumbe, the nearest peak, some 
fifteen miles away, but seeming close at hand, is nearly 
3,000 feet above the sea level, but looks as if it were part 
of a 5,000-feet peak which had been sliced off. This trun- 
cated apex is a crater, said by those who have visited it to 
be 2,000 feet in diameter by 200 feet deep. 

The town of Sitka, most picturesque herself, though dingy, 
occupies the incurve of the crescent-shaped level, cuddling 
like a trustful child between the knees of the great giants, 
with her attendant satellites ranged in view among the 
glancing waves, some cultivated as gardens or used as 
pastures, and others natural gems of rock with verdure 
clad. And all her lap is filled with wealth of evergreens, 
back to the very bases of the mountains ; sparkling streams 



i82 OUR NE W ALASKA. 

course through them ; and giant firs whose feet rest in the 
shadows of the valleys, lift their tremendous spires high 
into the sunlight of the upper air. The atmosphere is soft, 
like Italy's, suffused with pink and yellow laid on blue, and 
whenever the tall truncated cones catch the hues of sunset, 
the lava of their ice-crowned tops glows red hot ! Right 
in the harbor of Sitka is Japonskoi (Japanese) Island, 
where government pastures cattle. Eighty years ago a 
Japanese junk, drifting on the Kuro-Siwo from its native 
moorings, crossed the sea and rested there — a waif from 
Asia, to suggest to intellects obtuse the explanation of 
ethnical possibilities not at all mysterious or unaccountable. 
It is stated that the sympathetic Russians kindly cared for 
the castaway survivors of that dreadful drift and returned 
them to their country, as witnesses of a long-vexed problem 
solved. Some ten miles from town is Silver Bay, with a 
trout stream and a superb waterfall, which is often visited 
by excursionists who go in boats towed by a steam launch 
which tail out behind in a most exhilarating way. Indee*d 
a steam launch of light draft, is indispensable to pleasure or 
business in those parts. Six miles north is Old Harbor, 
where the Russian Baronoff built the first fort in 1799, call- 
ing it Archangel. Three years later its garrison was massa- 
cred by Sitka Indians, and the present site of Sitka was 
occupied instead, and named New Archangel. The Hot 
Springs are ten or eleven miles south of town, on the main 
land, in a little bay which is protected by a break-water of 
pretty islands. There are three mineral springs — two of 
warm magnesia, and one of hot sulphur, the density of 
which is indicated by heavy incrustations in their basins. 
The temperature ranges from one hundred and twenty to 
one hundred and twenty-five degrees. Almost every visitor 
claims to have boiled an egg in them, but I have yet to 
learn where each contrives to get his egg. It might be well 
for future tourists who like positive tests to provide them- 
selves with eggs in Boston, New York, San 'Francisco or 
New Orleans, so as not to be disappointed when they finally 
reach the place. A few rods off is a clear spring of cold 
water, in which there may be trout convenient for the other 
popular test. For myself, when I visit the Yellowstone 
Park, or other noted place, I always catch my fish ready 
boiled. In i860 the Russians built a hospital and bath, and 
the treatment was said to have had wonderful remedial 
powers in skin and rheumatic diseases. The buildings are 
now badly dilapidated and ought to be restored at once. If 
done, Sitka would have become more than ever a popular 



R US SI A IN A M ERIC A . 1 8 3 

watering place, and an equivalent equal to the outlay would 
flow into the official treasury daily. In summer, excursion 
trips should be arranged to the springs at stated periods, so 
that visitors can depend upon them. Some four miles from 
Sitka is an old Russian redoubt, where there was also a 
prison, which is well worth a visit, not only as a relic of the 
former occupation, but for its beautiful scenery, the moun- 
tains rising 3,000 feet almost perpendicularly, on one side 
of the bay, and inclosing a lake (Ozersky) ten miles long, 
which is much resorted to by anglers. There are five Rus- 
sian houses still standing which are used for a salmon can- 
nery, and there are besides several other houses for the 
fishermen, and huts for the Siwashes. Substantial bridges, 
also built by the Russians, cross the rapids between the 
outlet of the lake and the bay, and form part of a long and 
winding promenade. Indeed one may say that all the 
vicinity of Sitka is suggestive of Russian America, which 
we, before its purchase, looked upon askance, as hyper- 
borean and savage ; but now are surprised to discover was 
so far advanced that the humble people of Cape Cod, or 
other shore settlements of the Atlantic, would have been 
appalled at its magnificence. Every thing built by the 
Russians was of a substantial character, and where the offi- 
cial comfort was concerned, with elegance. 

The old Baronoffs lived high. They enriched themselves 
from the furs of the land, and subsisted on the appropria- 
tions of the crown. All they earned was clear profit, and 
whenever perchance a prince of the blood came over the 
Strait from Siberia, he was royally entertained ; moreover, 
their spiritual welfare was zealously cared for by the 
church, which is able even now, so many years after the 
retirement of the Muscovites to maintain gratuitously its 
several missions at Sitka, St. Paul, St. Michael's, Anvic, 
Oonalashka, and Andreavsky. And so it happens that 
Greek priests still officiate for penitents of the great 
Republic, and the three little brass bells that were cast in 
Russia ring out from the tower of the Sitka sanctuary a 
Slavic melody for all Americans who respect the Sabbath. 
It is fortunate, indeed, that the little capital of Alaska was 
not left wholly bereft of Christian influences, else would its 
mongrel population have gone wholly to the bad ; for so 
long as the suggestive spire stood in their midst, pointing 
heavenward, duty received a reminder and wickedness a 
check. At present there is a form of Protestant worship at 
the Indian mission, and ere many months elapse I trust a 
befitting chapel will be erected to meet the religious 



1 84 OUR NE W ALA SKA. 

demands of a growing population. The public have long 
been made familiar with the architecture of this little church, 
its lofty dome, its shapely minaret, its gilt and gold and 
silver ornaments, and costly vestments, and holy pictures ; 
and since it is now so well preserved in photograph and 
tourist's story, I can manifest no sincerer interest for the 
saintly relic than to bespeak for it the trifling sum necessary 
for its structural repair and preservation, or at least to 
replace the old barrel which is now used as a baptismal tub. 
It is a sin and a shame to let it drop piecemeal into ruin. 
The green paint is nearly worn from off the metal dome, 
and its wooden sides are weather-worn and stained; the 
doors are sprung, the bolts are rusted ; the interior is well 
nigh despoiled by time and vandal hands ; the voice of one 
of the bells is hushed, and in winter the main auditorium 
can not be used with comfort ; yet I see that the gilding of 
the spire and roof continues bright, and by that token a 
new day is at hand. 

The Russian population of Sitka pure and mixed, is about 
250, and the church attendance is made up chiefly of 
Indians and Creoles, although Father Metropolsky is a well- 
instructed priest, pious and intelligent, and so might court 
the attendance of the better classes in the absence of teachers 
of other sects, especially and inasmuch as the services are 
conducted in the Slavonic language, which is both impres- 
sive and innocuous. The Indian communicants are always 
devout and neatly dressed, observing all the periods and 
crossing themselves at proper times with due observance of 
the formula ; and as the services are conducted with form- 
ality and proper ceremony no essential rites can be over- 
looked. I agree with a most intelligent correspondent who 
has written : " There is a very silly and unnecessary antipa- 
thy existing between the missionaries here and this church, 
and instead of working harmoniously together in their efforts 
to Christianize the Indians, they work at cross purposes. If 
the Greek Church or any other can succeed in making the 
Indians clean themselves up one day in the week at least, 
well zrA good ; it is a great step toward godliness, and it is 
the purest nonsense to try to Christianize any body before he 
is civilized to a certain extent." Ever since the American 
accession, the missionaries have antagonized the Greek 
Church, and the public officials fight the missionaries ; and 
I could only wish that the long-suffering Siwash might look 
quietly on and pick up what drops in the melee to his own 
advantage. 

It has taken a good while for the country to adapt itself 



R US SI A IN A M ERICA . 185 

to the changed circumstances which followed its relinquish- 
ment by the Russians. The Muscovites left every thing in 
good order when they evacuated Sitka, indeed they wisely 
let go by degrees, and not all at once ; and they still retain 
some hold on the missions which they established. Had 
they not done so, nine years of utter neglect would have 
left the place a useless ruin. That there is a house still 
standing is largely due to the fact that they built of great 
logs, both hewed and round, and often two feet square ; 
the substantial structures which they have erected have not 
only withstood the high winds of winter, but the wearing 
tooth of time, very well for a climate whose rainfall is 
55^ inches per year, soaking every thing with moisture. 
The principal buildings which are now occupied by the ter- 
ritorial and naval officers as custom-house, court-house, 
barracks, and government warehouse have at some time 
been coated with a dull yellow paint which still sticks to a 
degree ; some of the roofs are either of iron painted red, or 
they have grown rusty from rain. Once they were preten- 
tious structures all, large, spacious, two-storied, with hard 
wood doors elaborately carved, and some regard paid to 
ornament in the shape of stained-glass panes inserted in 
parts to be effective ; but now the foundation timbers are 
eaten half through by rot, some of the 6-inch planking of 
the floors has been torn up for fuel ; piles of rubbish fill 
one-half of the apartments and with the exception of the 
marine barracks there is not one of all the lot with its win- 
dow-glass unbroken or the plastering intact. A fire once 
cleared out several of the rooms in the custom-house, and 
there the charred debris still remains ; only three rooms in 
the entire great building are fit to be occupied and two of 
these are used by the judge and attorney. I believe the 
governor has to " rustle " for his quarters. The grand old 
castle which crowns a rocky eminence that overlooks the 
town, and was once the pride of all the Baronoffs and 
Romanoffs, is now the worst of all the Badly-offs ; and 
although it looks imposing in the uncertain twilight, noth- 
ing but immediate relief will save it from the assaults of 
time and weather. Once it was destroyed by earthquake, 
once by fire, and now the grand staircase up the rocky 
heights will scarcely stand another year, and after they 
collapse only scaling ladders can be used. A half-dozen 
unhappy barrels collect the rainfall from the roof ; the 
whole structure is sprung in every joint and tenon, and ere 
many moons have passed it will not be safe for the legend- 
ary " ghost of the hapless princess " which wanders there- 



1 86 OUR NE W ALA SKA . 

abouts, to ascend to light her periodical beacon on the roof, 
without the help of the signal officer who has his crow's- 
nest there. The marines who guard the warehouse and 
magazine, keep an eye to the tottering walls when they make 
their turns, and pedestrians who pass under the projecting 
roof of the old trading-house, whence bullets were liable 
to rain upon the intruders, look aloft with more appre- 
hensions of dry rot than hot shot. The block-houses 
which remain can scarcely stand, and but one side of the old 
stockade guards the plaza, shutting off the Indian " ranch." 
So it is throughout the town. With its population reduced 
two-thirds and its business nine-tenths, with half the shops 
and dwellings tenantless, there is not a building of any kind 
I venture to say, without a window broken. There are 
not more than two or three which indicate fresh paint on 
their fronts, and not a new structure of any kind except in 
the purlieus of the Indian " ranch," where the sight of a 
fresh slab is richness to the eyes. On every side the grue- 
some ravens croak, truly the " embodiment of spirits long 
departed." Noting the abundant traces of a previous occu- 
pancy, with the dead past buried all around them, antiqua- 
rians already begin to speculate how many hundred years 
ago these bastion towers were built, so dilapidated and gray 
they look ; industriously they decipher the inscriptions on 
the ancient coins ; and simple minded Yankees, when they 
see their flag floating in the air, wonder if this is really their 
own " God's country," or where they are. Nevertheless and 
withal, the town has still a habitable and homelike look. 
There are gardens filled with vegetables and flowers, gera- 
niums in window pots, cows quietly grazing along the 
streets. Occasionally the thrum of a piano is heard, which 
is blessed music in the wilderness, though intolerable in 
town. Some of the Russian houses preserve their national 
characteristics, so that we have only to enter them to learn 
how the people live in Russia. As ladies have a better fac- 
ulty of observation and tact to describe domestic econo- 
mies, I will save myself the trouble of doing so by copying 
from my lady correspondent " Mintwood," who is accurate 
and vivacious. She says : 

" As I am writing in one of them at this moment, I will 
describe it, as an illustration of one of the best Sitkan 
houses of Russian origin. It fronts directly on the bay 
with a charming outlook, and between the house and the 
bay is a large garden, in which a Russian neighbor has a 
fine colony of cabbages and some potato tops. The path 
from the gate leads up a gentle eminence between two rows 



RUSSIA IN AMERICA. 187 

of gooseberry bushes, which are loaded with fruit, and sup- 
plemented in the rear with currant bushes, also in bearing 
with green clusters. There is a row of pie-plant, in bar- 
rels, and a hot bed, the sash of which is a fish net. There 
are lines in the garden on which are strung pieces of shin- 
ing tin to frighten the ravens and crows. There are elder 
bushes and two fruit trees ; one, a crab-apple, was quite full 
of blossoms. A clump of wild roses bloom beautifully 
under one window, and under another is a fragrant bed of 
spearmint. In the back yard are four outbuildings, all of 
them having evidently at one time been dwelling nouses ; 
two are of logs. The house itself, of one story and a loft, 
has a vestibule, opening into a hall, at the right' of which is 
the large parlor, and at the left the large kitchen. In addi- 
tion to these rooms there are two good -sized bedrooms. 
The parlor has five windows, each window consisting of six 
panes, each pane a foot square, in two rows. The lower 
part of the window, of four panes, opens like a French win- 
dow. The window sills are deep, and at one window there 
is a green roller curtain. The parlor furniture consists of 
an old mahogany Russian sofa, with a high back entirely in 
veneer ; the hair-covered cushioned seat is dilapidated, and 
is temporarily upholstered with a rubber blanket. There 
are three chairs in various stages of infirmity, and a number 
of four-legged stools of ingenious construction. There is a 
mahogany table, and a ditto bureau, a modern and proba- 
bly native made piece of furniture, of yellow cedar, quite 
pretty, and consisting of closets and drawers. The skin of 
a mountain goat covers a considerable space on the bare 
floor, and a large box stove, for wood, that was manufac- 
tured in Philadelphia, has had a fire burning in it nearly 
every day. The papered walls have their attractions — an 
old Russian print of the Virgin Mary, and a local painting 
of Sitka. The bedrooms have bedsteads — rickety— and 
bureaus, and two pieces of broken looking-glass. The 
kitchen is comfortably furnished ; an abundance of tables 
and shelves, some dishes and glassware, an old brass 
samovar, a heavy copper boiler, skillets, other culinary uten- 
sils, a worn-out cooking stove that still serves the user of it 
well, nevertheless, and a pair of wooden buckets." 

From the center of the town a macadamized road extends 
along the curve of the beach, amply wide for vehicles to 
pass abreast, lined by cosy dwellings on the landward side, 
and commanding a fine view of the bay and islands and the 
overhanging mountains. Perhaps some day the fashion- 
ables of Sitka will use it for a carriage drive, but as yet few 



1 88 OUR NEW ALA SKA. 

vehicles have ever run over it. Quien sabe? who shall 
tell ? This road leads past the Indian mission, and to In- 
dian River, just beyond, which is a favorite resort for visi- 
tors and towns-people as well. Since the occupancy of the 
town by the government marines, they have devoted lots of 
labor to building bridges, rustic seats and walks along this 
sparkling stream, which is broken into falls and picturesque 
reaches where trout disport ; and he who directed the work 
has done it admirably well, for every natural beauty has 
been left untouched, and as my friend already quoted de- 
clares, "it is just like walking through a magnificently 
wooded park which has gone wild for centuries, with only 
the walks left civilized." Some of the firs and hemlocks 
are simply immense, and the undergrowth is frightful to 
penetrate. In the midst of the forest I found a small potato 
patch which had been fenced, but it was hard in August to 
find either potatoes or fence. Some of the Indian boys dis- 
like to come to the river to fish for fear of bears, but no 
bears ever yet seemed to take a liking to any of them. This 
river furnishes the only good drinking water to be had, and 
the good people of the town walk out along these beautiful 
paths with tin pails and demijohns to bring in drinking 
water. The barracks details fetch it in a canoe, and that 
this inconvenience exists in Sitka is but one illustration of 
the decay and amazing enervation of the town. If it did 
not rain here so much, and barrels and casks under eaves 
were not kept well filled most of the time, the water ques- 
tion would be a more difficult one than it is. 

Hitherto the management of local or territorial affairs 
has not been happy. None of the appropriations made for 
the support of the civil government or for specific purposes 
appear to have been accounted for. Until two years ago 
the government itself was not a success. Its seat was never 
warm. There was no ownership in any thing. It did not 
even know what belonged to it. A merchant claimed the 
public warehouse as his private property ; another citizen 
claimed the dock, and the navy had actually to build a 
wharf for its own necessities. (N. B. When there is any 
litigation in Alaska about wharves, the teredo steps in and 
eats them up before a decision can be reached.) The last 
administration was unfortunate. The governor broke his 
arm and had a paralytic stroke, and the district attorney 
was killed in California by falling from a railroad train. 
When their successors took office, the district judge was 
found not to be a success, and attempts were made to 
prevent the confirmation of the new governor. Now, how- 



RUSSIA IN AMERICA. 189 

ever, an auspicious era seems to have dawned. Immigra- 
tion is pouring in apace. The newspaper recently started 
at Sitka is a wide-awake journal, devoted heartily to the 
development of the country, and from it the public can 
obtain information which can be relied upon. Governor 
Swineford means " straight business." Much depends 
upon his sagacity and discretion. He is laboring to secure 
a remedy for defects in the law governing territorial organ- 
ization. There being no connection now between the 
different towns, in sending a prisoner from one point to 
another for trial, he is as liable to go via San Francisco as 
otherwise, taking three months for the transit, so that it is 
less expensive not to take than to make prisoners. What 
the government needs is a revenue cutter and one or two 
steam launches to serve as harbor police-boats and deputy 
sheriffs in these strange water-ways. Their moral effect 
alone would make all the difference in the world. It would 
insure good order and stability. 

For whatever lies beyond Sitka, between it and Mt. St. 
Elias, 200 miles further west, I can net speak from my per- 
sonal experience. Recently excursion trips have been 
extended to include those additional waters, within whose 
limits are the greatest number of high and imposing peaks 
to be found in any range in the world. In a pamphlet of 
100 pages, beautifully printed and illustrated by the North- 
ern Pacific Railway Company, to influence summer travel 
to Alaska, I find the following synopsis from the pen of 
Lieutenant Schwatka : 

" Almost as soon as Cape Spencer is doubled, the south- 
ern spurs of the Mount St. Elias Alps burst into view, 
Crillon and Fairweather being prominent, and the latter 
easily recognized from our acquaintance with it from the 
waters of Glacier Bay. A trip of an hour or two takes us 
along a comparatively uninteresting coast, as viewed from 
the ' square off our starboard beam ; ' but all this time 
the mind is fixed by the grand Alpine views we have ahead 
of us, that are slowly developing in plainer outline here 
and there as we speed toward them. Soon we are abreast 
of Icy Point ; while just beyond it comes down a glacier 
to the ocean that gives about three miles of solid sea-wall 
of ice, while its source is lost in the heights covering the 
bases of the snowy peaks just behind. The high peak to 
the right, as we steam by the glacier front, is Mount La 
Perouse, named for one of the most daring of France's 
long list of explorers, and who lost his life in the interest 
of geographical science. His eyes rested on this range 



19° OUR NEW ALASKA. 

of Alpine peaks in 1786, just a century ago. Its sides are 
furrowed with glaciers, one of which is the ice-wall before 
our eyes, and which is generally known as the La Perouse 
Glacier. The highest peak of all, and on the left of this 
noble range, is Mount Crillon, named by La Perouse, in 
1786, after the French Minister of the Marine ; while 
between Crillon and La Perouse is Mount D'Agelet, the 
astronomer of that celebrated expedition. Crillon cleaves 
the air for 16,000 feet above the sea, on which we rest, and 
can be seen for over a hundred miles to sea. It, too, is 
surrounded with glaciers in all directions from its crown. 
Crillon and La Perouse are about seven miles apart, nearly 
north and south of each other. About fifteen miles north- 
west of Crillon is Lituya Peak, 10,000 feet high ; and the 
little bay-opening that we pass, between the two, is the 
entrance to Lituya Bay, a sheet of water which La Perouse 
has pronounced as one of the most extraordinary in the 
world for grand scenery, with its glaciers and Alpine 
shores. Our steamer will not enter, however ; for the pas- 
sage is dangerous even to small boats — one island bearing 
a monument to the officers and men of La Perouse's expe- 
dition, lost in the tidal wave which sweeps through the con- 
tracted passage like a breaker over a treacherous bar. 
Some ten or twelve miles northwest from Lituya Peak is 
Mount Fairweather, which bears abreast us after a little 
over an hour's run from Lituya Bay. It was named by 
Cook in 1778, and is generally considered to be a few hun- 
dred feet shorter than Mount Crillon. It is in every way, 
by its peculiar isolation from near ridges almost as high as 
itself, a much grander peak than Crillon, whose surround- 
ings are not so good for a fine Alpine display. Fair- 
weather, too, has its frozen river flowing down its sides ; 
but none of them reach the sea, for a low, wooded country, 
some three or four miles in width, lies like a glacis at the 
seaward side of the St. Elias Alps, for a short distance 
along this part of the coast. The somber, deep green 
forests add an impressive feature to the scene, however, 
lying between the dancing waves below and the white and 
blue glacier ice above. Rounding Cape Fairweather, the 
coast trends northward ; and, as our bowsprit is pointed in 
the same direction, directly before us are seen immense 
glaciers reaching to the sea. From Cape Fairweather 
(abreast of Mt. Fairweather) to Yakutat Bay (abreast of 
Mt. Vancouver) no conspicuous peak rears its head above 
the grand mountain chain which for nearly a hundred miles 
lies between these two Alpine bastions ; but, nevertheless, 



RUSSIA IN AMERICA. 191 

every hour reveals a new mountain of 5,000 to 8,000 feet in 
height, which, if placed anywhere else, would be held up 
with national or state pride as a grand acquisition. Here 
they are only dwarfed by grander peaks." 



THE SEALS OF PRIBYLOV 



A treatise on Alaska, however ephemeral or unpreten- 
tious, would hardly be complete without some reference 
being made to its fur-seal fishery, upon which almost the 
only revenue of the territory was based up to the year 1884. 
Professor Henry W. Elliott's official report to the govern- 
ment, made in 1882, comprising the result of many years in- 
vestigation, is an exhaustive account of all there is to know 
about the subject ; and from it I have gathered the facts ap- 
pended. This is an illustrated volume of nearly 200 quarto 
pages, comprising a history of the fur-seal fishery from 
earliest dates ; the discovery of the Pribylov group in 1786 
by the hardy Muscovite whose name they bear collectively ; 
the configuration and natural history of the Islands ; their 
acquisition by the United States ; the formation and opera- 
tions of the Alaska Commercial Company ; and a descrip- 
tion of the inhabitants, their occupation and mode of life. 
The breeding-places and habits of the seals and all their 
phocine kindred, the walrus, sea-lion, sea-otter, hair-seal, 
etc., and the methods employed to secure their hides, and 
to prepare and ship them to market, and to dye them to 
suit the wearers, are all given in the most considerate man- 
ner, with due regard to the sensibilities of the animals them- 
selves, which, next to the ladies who hope to wear their 
pelts, are unquestionably the parties chiefly interested. The 
details are intensely interesting to the reader, and to the 
seals excruciating, we may believe. 

Located fourteen hundred miles west-north-west from 
Sitka, as the ship sails, and nearly two hundred miles from 
Oonalashka, the nearest land, sea-girt and beset with out- 
lying reefs, continually befogged in summer, and in winter 
swept by cruel icy blasts, the Pribylovs are hard to find. It 
is said that navigators have even touched their cliffs with 
their vessels' yard-arms before they were aware of their 
close proximity. And it is because of this isolation, as well 
as because they afford the only good resting place in Alaska, 
that the seals frequent them. They are all of volcanic 
origin, bearing some not remote traces of dynamic action, 



THE SEALS OF PRIBYLOV. 1 93 

the crater of Otter island being " as distinctly denned, and 
as plainly scorched as though it had burned out yesterday." 
St. Paul island is thirteen miles in length by six in breadth, 
composed of rough, rocky uplands, rugged hills, smooth 
volcanic cones, parti-colored sand-dunes, grassy plats, and 
wet and slippery flats, where the seals most congregate. It is 
interspersed with pools and lagoons of good fresh water, in 
which a pretty minute viviparous fish is found. St. George 
is ten miles long by four and one-half miles wide, steep and 
precipitous on all sides, except at three short reaches- of 
coast which the seals have appropriated for " rookeries." 
Like St. Paul, it also has many pools of water. Its highest 
land rises 930 feet, an/i St. Paul's 600 feet. Nearly half the 
shore of St. Paul is a sandy beach, while on St. George there 
is less than a mile of it all put together. Millions of sea- 
fowl breed and hover perpetually over their ledges and in- 
accessible terraces, and all the available spaces are filled 
with eggs in spring. There would be valuable guano de- 
posits except that they are annually washed clean off by the 
beating storms of winter, during which period the birds are 
discreetly absent. Each island has its village of resident 
overseers and employes, its killing-grounds, salting and 
packing houses, and its little harbor where vessels may load 
and discharge in favorable weather only. As for the rest, 
on St. George t'here is a water-fall which drops 400 feet per- 
pendicularly into the sea in spring ; a little running stream 
to diversify the asperity of the physical contour ; and on 
every prominent eminence a Greek cress erected there by 
Russians, some of them as long as sixty years ago. There 
is a good deal of grass — a dozen varieties of different 
lengths and quality, and a multitude of pretty flowers, ferns 
and mosses. Snow melts at a very low temperature, and 
grass begins to grow at 34 degrees or 36 degrees even if it 
be covered by melting drifts of snow and the frost has 
hardened the ground for many feet beneath. Some success 
has followed attempts at gardening, and lettuce, radishes, 
turnips, and even small potatoes, have been grown in 
favored spots. Countless sparrows come in early spring 
and are gathered up for food by the thousands, just as the 
Israelites gathered quails. These birds agreeably vary the 
staple diet of seal meat, of which the little communities, 
about 400 souls all told, consume some 1200 pounds a day. 
The government allows them to catch 6,000 seals a year for 
their subsistence. Excepting two or three mules for work, 
the only animals on the islands are hosts of blue foxes, lem- 
mings, which honeycomb the softer earth with their burrows, 



1 94 O UR NE W ALA SKA. 

mice, and stump-tail cats, which run wild and roam every- 
where. On favorable nights when the air is still and the 
moonlight full, these incorrigible cats join in such an un- 
earthly caterwauling that the natives turn out en masse to in- 
terdict them. The shrieks of the tempest can not compare 
with the ferocity of the chorus. But for all, they decimate 
the mice. There are no reptiles on the islands, and no 
mosquitoes nor venomous flies ; but there is a variety of fly 
which settles down upon the grass of the killing-grounds 
making the surface appear as if it were bedaubed with liquid 
stove-polish, for the color they impart. Their food is the 
blood and offal of the slaughter. The perfume of the 
Pribylovs is intense, and one may perceive the odor far at 
sea when the wind is fair. On a hot day in the close cabins 
of the village it would be overpowering to any body who was 
not used to it. No fish can be caught within the vicinity, 
as the seals devour all that approach. 

Six miles north from St. Paul Island is Otter Island, once 
frequented by herds of sea otters, a sheer, cold and un- 
broken mural precipice, except at a low depression on the 
north side. Its walls average 300 feet in height. It is 
fairly over-run with blue foxes. Walrus Island lies six miles 
southwest, the abode of many of these huge animals, some 
of which will weigh a ton. It is a mere ledge barely lifted 
above the wash of angry waves, only a fourth of a mile long 
and 100 yards wide. It literally swarms with wild fowl, and 
is, therefore, very convenient for eggers, who, in other local- 
ities, have to climb up precipices, and swing from jutting 
ledges to gather their plunder. There is an island 200 
miles north of St. Paul, but having no commercial connection 
with it, called St. Matthew, which is of volcanic origin, and 
fairly swarms with polar bears, which sometimes measure 
eight feet long and weigh 1,200 pounds. They are very 
timid, and flee precipitately, old and young, upon the ap- 
proach of man. There are deserted Russian cabins on the 
island, which were built and once occupied by bear-hunters, 
who did a big business in meat, pelts and oil. The tradi- 
tional ferocity of these animals seems to have wholly petered 
out in this sub-Arctic ursine community. 

The Pribylov Islands were first peopled by a native colony 
brought over from Oonalashka and other Aleutian neighbor- 
hoods by the Russian fur-sealers in 1 786, and were employed 
in their service ; but they lived miserably in hovels which 
were half dug-out. Now, under the American regime, and 
the fostering care of the Alaska Commercial Company, their 
progeny are happy and well provided for in all those respects 



THE SEALS OF PRIB YLO V. 195 

which make a sealer's life worth the living. There are two 
hundred and ninety-eight people on St. Paul, of which 
fourteen are whites, one a woman ; on St. George ninety- 
two people, of Whom four are whites. On both islands each 
family lives in a snug frame dwelling, painted, and lined 
with tarred paper, furnished with a stove and fuel, and out- 
houses complete. Streets are laid out, and regularly platted ; 
there is a large church at St. Paul, and a smaller one at St. 
George ; a hospital at St. Paul, with a complete stock of 
drugs, and physicians on both islands to take care of the 
people ; a school-house on each island, for which teachers 
are paid by the company for eight months in the year to 
instruct the youth, one of these teachers being a native 
Aleut who accomplished a four years course of study in 
Rutland, Vt.; and a store on each island, where once a year 
the trading ship brings the latest fashions, and every body 
enjoys a holiday opening. The church services are held in 
the Russian language, and their support is maintained 
entirely bv native contribution. There are eighty families 
and eighty dwellings on St. Paul, and twenty-four at St. 
George, besides eight other structures, ecclesiastical and 
commercial, all painted and built by skilled mechanics, so 
that the settlements present an appearance up to the average 
of Eastern villages. The people all dress in modern attire, 
and eagerly discuss the newest fashion plates, but as yet 
silk " tiles " are unknown. Except during the sealing 
season, they have absolutely nothing to do but go to church 
and vegetate. Fully two hundred and ninety days of the 
year are occupied in observing the religious calendar. 
Many sleep away their time ; a few gamble ; some play the 
fiddle and accordeon. The population is very orderly. 
There are no policemen, no courts of justice, no fines, no 
crimes, and no instituted penalties for crimes. Quite 
frequently the islanders make a journey to their relatives 
on the mainland ; and to visit Oonalashka is like a rustic 
" doing " the metropolis. Oonalashka is no insignificant 
burg, be it known, for it discounts Sitka. There are 
tourists, little traveled, who think that Sitka is the land's 
end, but there are half a dozen towns at least lying west, 
along the coast and up the Yukon, which have a larger 
population. 

The Alaska Commercial Company was organized by 
Messrs. Hutchinson and Morgan, both New England men, 
in 1869. With others who watched the negotiations for the 
Alaska purchase they came out early to the seal islands, 
and during the previous year had exclusive control of them. 



I9 6 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

The methods of the company are now complete, and it 
seems almost impossible to improve upon them. Abuses 
and breach of trust are almost impossible within the environ- 
ment of restrictions by which they are hedged about, and 
it would be utterly impossible to catch more than the stipu- 
lated quota of seals without the fact becoming known at 
once. Only once have they caught the full complement 
(one hundred thousand) allowed by law, and then only 
inadvertently. Their rule is to make the number one 
thousand scant so as to avoid carping criticisms. The 
breeding grounds are protected, and obstreperous old males 
diligently kept off from them, but they are allowed to come 
to all other localities. One million seal pups are born every 
year, and of these there is a loss of fifty per cent, by whales, 
sharks, and predatory creatures, after they leave for their 
foraging grounds. While breeding they strictly fast. When 
they leave they go in independent gangs, and not all at once, 
and they range as far south as the forty-seventh parallel. 
Seals are in their prime at from four to five years of age, 
and only those which are desirable are selected for the 
annual drive. An average seal will measure six and a half 
feet long and weigh four hundred pounds, but they are 
caught up to six hundred pounds and seven and a half feet 
long. It is estimated, within the power of accurate calcula- 
tion, that there are over three millions of seals on each 
island in the breeding season, not counting the non-breeders, 
" old bachelors," etc. The entire catch of one hundred 
thousand seals is now made in about thirty working days, 
included between the 14th day of June and the 1st of 
August. Seals do remain longer than the latter date, but 
their fur deteriorates rapidly. The sealers work under the 
direction of foremen, who receive the wages due for their 
work, according to the tale, and divide it among them, 
making up a number of extra shares over and above the 
men's, which go to the widows, the priest and the church. 
They receive forty cents per seal, and fifty cents to one 
dollar per day for incidental labor. It is estimated that 
more than four millions of sealskins have been taken from 
the Pribylovs since 1797. When the killing season has 
arrived, details of men run in between the sleeping seals 
and the surf-wash, and drive them slowly to designated 
slaughtering grounds, at a speed of half a mile an hour, 
halting them occasionally to rest and cool off, for heatifig 
injures their fur ; and it is a comical sight to see the long 
procession, urged on by shouts and clapping of whale thigh- 
bones, and gesticulating arms on the flanks and rear, wad- 



THE SEALS OF PRIBYLOV. 197 

dling, panting, gasping and shuffling along like so many 
fat men, in the most awkward manner conceivable. Some- 
times an old bull-seal, adipose and unwieldy, who can not 
travel with the younger ones, falls to the earth supinely, 
entirely exhausted, hot, and " clean done up." Another, 
too weary to travel any more, will stand up in his tracks 
and fight. These old recalcitrants are at once dismissed, 
abandoned and ignored, as of little value, their under-wool 
which gives price to the pelt, being much shorter, coarser, 
and scantier than that of the younger seals. When a halt 
is called and the men drop back from the line for a few 
moments, the march at once ceases, and every seal fans 
himself with his hind flippers, while his flanks heave with a 
subdued panting sound. It is a grievous sight to behold, 
but I have seen worse at a soldiers' parade on a 4th of July, 
when the sun stood at a hundred in the shade, and there 
was not lemonade enough to go round. When the seals 
have partially cooled off, the march to death is resumed. 
Finally the slaughter-ground is reached and the seals are 
told off in squads of one hundred and fifty, and at a given 
signal the executioners let go with clubs and lay them out 
right and left, after which they are knifed and skinned at 
the rate of one in every four minutes, although experts have 
done the job in a minute and a half. The clubs are six 
feet long, three inches in diameter at the but, made of hard 
wood, and manufactured in New London, Ct., expressly 
for this service. There is an excellent opportunity here to 
indulge in sentimentalism, but I forbear to speak of the 
languid eyes that plead before the uplifted club, and the 
heart-rending moans which come from those not dead. My 
real opinion is that there is little occasion to complain of 
needless cruelty. 

After the skins are flayed off, they are salted and piled in 
kenches as high as a man can toss them, " hair to fat and 
salt between," and having been allowed two weeks in which 
to pickle, are tied up in bundles of two skins each, hair out- 
side, and shipped to London via New York or Panama, to 
be dyed ; for few natural skins are less attractive than the 
fur seals, the fur not being visible, but concealed by a 
coat of stiff hair, dull gray, brown and grizzled. The art 
of dying in its perfection is said to be possessed by only 
one concern in London, although there are many other 
dyers ; and there is at Albany, in the state of New York, a 
firm which does splendid work, but their dye color is said 
to be lighter and not so rich as the Englishman's. The 
cost of a fur comes from a combination of causes and 



I9 y OUR NEW ALASKA. 

expenses which, it is affirmed, will keep the price up always 
to near its present figure. The Alaska Company has 
stations all over the Aleutian Islands west and north of 
Kodiak, and employs four steamers, and a dozen ships, barks 
and sloops, besides working boats. Its lease expires in 1890, 
but there is no doubt that it will be renewed. 

Fur seals and sea otters are sometimes caught in large 
numbers off the Straits of Fuca and the west coast of Van- 
couver's Island, and in limited numbers by the Indians on 
the Alaskan coast. Last winter the fur seals seemed to 
be frequenting the waters of southeastern Alaska in 
increased numbers. Old residents along the shores say 
that the last large run was twenty years ago, and was fol- 
lowed immediately after by a run of sea otter, and they are 
hoping for a like result now. The Sitka paper says that a 
good many fur seal skins, both of pups and grown seals, 
have lately reached the Sitka market. In 1883 there were 
ten schooners engaged in British waters, employing forty 
sailors and 296 hunters, the latter chiefly Indians, who used 
148 cedar canoes, and they took upward of 9,000 fur seals 
and 3,000 hair seals, valued at $93,000. The former are 
worth $10, and the latter fifty cents. Only ninety-six sea- 
otters were caught, marketable at $50 each. 

This brief synopsis will suffice to convey an idea of an 
interesting industry and locality of which very little is 
known at large. 

And now, leaving the seal islands, and the mountains and 
forests of Alaska, with their undergrowth and dampness, 
we are ready to turn our faces eastward, and homeward, 
where, climbing some crowning eminence which overlooks 
the tilled and tillable land, we view scores of blue lakes 
basking in the mellow haze, groves of party-colored foliage 
covering all the hillsides, fields dotted with conical straw 
piles and ricks of hay, meadows alive with grazing kine and 
herders, looking very red in the suffusion of the dawning 
light of day. And all the mirrored lakes reflect the form 
and color of the painted trees, as the looking-glass reflects 
the radiant bride, intensifying their crimson blush and 
heightening the effect of their tremulous emotion. 

With unfeigned pleasure we exchange rankness for rich- 
ness, and the tangle of the unkempt forest for the bright- 
ness of the cloth of gold, and a drier and more cheerful 
clime. The glory of the Indian summer pervades the 
land ; and while I gaze with rapture upon the golden land- 
scape, a solitary pine rises in the foreground like a spirit of 
retrospection. Its generations have long since passed 



THE SEALS OF PRIBYLOV, 



199 



away, and the ashes of their fallen dead lie buried all 
around; but its stately shadow is projected westward toward 
the unsurveyed domain where its mighty kindred still stand 
erect in all their primal grandeur ; and like a prophetic 
finger it points infallibly to the value of the " Seward 
Purchase." Every sigh that soughs through its weathered 
fronds in regret of departed greatness, whispers hope for 
the future prospects of Alaska. 




AN EXCURSION PARTY 



APPENDIX. 

AN ACT PROVIDING A CIVIL GOVERNMENT FOR ALASKA. 

Be it enacted by the Senate a?id House of Representatives 
of the United States of America in Congress assembled : That 
the territory ceded to the United States by Russia by the 
treaty of March thirtieth, eighteen hundred and sixty- 
seven, and known as Alaska, shall constitute a civil and 
judicial district, the government of which shall be organ- 
ized and administered as hereinafter provided. The tem- 
porary seat of government of said district is hereby estab- 
lished at Sitka. 

Section 2. That there shall be appointed for the said 
district a governor, who shall reside therein during his 
term of office and be charged with the interests of the 
United States Government that may arise within said dis- 
trict. To the end aforesaid he shall have authority to see 
that the laws enacted for said district are enforced, and to 
require the faithful discharge of their duties by the officials 
appointed to administer the same. He may also grant 
reprieves for offenses committed against the laws of the 
district or of the United States until the decision of the 
President thereon shall be made known. He shall be ex 
officio commander-in-chief of the militia of said district, and 
shall have power to call out the same when necessary to 
the due execution of the laws and to preserve the peace ; 
and to cause all able-bodied citizens of the United States 
in said district to enroll and serve as such when the public 
exigency demands; and he shall perform generally in and 
over said district such acts as pertain to the office of gov- 
ernor of a territory, so far as the same may be made or be- 
come applicable thereto. He shall make an annual report 
on the first day of October in each year, to the President 
of the United States, of his official acts and doings, and of 
the condition of said district, with references to its resources, 
industries, population, and the administration of the civil 
government thereof. And the President of the United 
States shall have power to review and to confirm or annul 
any reprieves granted or other acts done by him. 



APPENDIX, 20 1 

Section 3. That there shall be, and hereby is, estab- 
lished a district court for said district, with the civil and 
criminal jurisdiction of district courts of the United States 
exercising the jurisdiction of circuit courts, and such other 
jurisdiction, not inconsistent with this act, as may be 
established by law ; and a district judge shall be appointed 
for said district, who shall during his term of office reside 
therein, and hold at least two terms of said court therein 
in each year, one at Sitka, beginning on the first Monday 
in May, and the other at Wrangell, beginning on the first 
Monday in November. He is also authorized and directed 
to hold such special sessions as may be necessary for the 
dispatch of the business of said court, at such times and 
places in said district as he may deem expedient, and may 
adjourn such special session to any other time previous to a 
regular session. He shall have authority to employ inter- 
preters, and to make allowances for the necessary expenses 
of his court. 

Section 4. That a clerk shall be appointed for said 
court, who shall be ex officio secretary and treasurer of 
said district ; a district-attorney, and a marshal, all of whom 
shall during their terms of office reside therein. The clerk 
shall record and preserve copies of all the laws, proceed- 
ings, and official acts applicable to said district. He shall 
also receive all moneys collected from fines, forfeitures, or 
in any other manner except from violations of the custom 
laws, and shall apply the same to the incidental expenses 
of said district court, and the allowances thereof as directed 
by the judge of said court, and shall account for the same 
in detail, and for any balances on account thereof, quar- 
terly, to and under the direction of the Secretary of the 
Treasury. He shall be ex officio recorder of deeds and mort- 
gages and certificates of location of mining claims and 
other contracts relating to real estate and register of wills 
for said district, and shall establish secure offices in the 
towns of Sitka and Wrangell, in said district, for the safe 
keeping of all his official records, and of records concern- 
ing the reformation and establishment of the present 
status of titles to lands, as hereafter directed : Provided, 
That the district court hereby created may direct, if it 
shall deem expedient, the establishment of separate offices 
at the settlements at Wrangell, Oonalashka, and Juneau 
City, respectively, for the recording of such instruments 
as may pertain to the several natural divisions of said dis- 
trict most convenient to said settlements, the limits of which 
shall, in the event of such direction, be defined by said 



202 OUR NE W ALA SKA. 

court; and said offices shall be in charge of the commis- 
sioners respectively hereinafter provided. 

Section 5. That there shall be appointed by the Presi- 
dent four commissioners in and for the said district, who 
shall have the jurisdiction and powers of commissioners of 
the United States circuit courts in any part of said district 
but who shall reside, one at Sitka, one at Wrangell* one at 
Oonalashka, and one at Juneau City. Such commissioners 
shall exercise all the duties and powers, civil and criminal, 
now conferred on justices of the peace under the general 
laws of the state of Oregon, so far as the same may be 
appl'cable in said district, and may not be in conflict with 
this act, or the laws of the United States. They shall also 
have jurisdiction, subject to the supervision of the district 
judge, in all testamentary and probate matters, and for this 
purpose their courts shall be opened at stated terms and be 
courts of record, and be provided with a seal for the authen- 
tication of their official acts. They shall also have power 
to grant writs of habeas corpus for the purpose of inquiring 
into the cause of restraint of liberty, which writs shall be 
made returnable before the said district judge for said dis- 
trict ; and like proceedings shall be had thereon as if the 
same had been granted by said judge under the general 
laws of the United States in such cases. Said commission- 
ers shall also have the powers of notaries public, and shall 
keep a record of all deeds and other instruments of writing 
acknowledged before them and relating to the title to or 
transfer of property within said district, which record shall 
be subject to public inspection. Said commissioners shall 
also keep a record of all fines and forfeitures received by 
them, and shall pay over the same quarterly to the clerk of 
said district court. The governor appointed under the pro- 
visions of this act shall, from time to time, inquire into the 
operations of the Alaska Seal and Fur Company, and shall 
annually report to Congress the result of such inquiries and 
any and all violations by said company of the agreement 
existing between the United States and said company. 

Section 6. That the marshal for said district shall have 
the general authority and powers of the United States mar- 
shals of the states and territories. He shall be the execu- 
tive officer of said court, and charged with the execution of 
all processes of said court and with the transportation and 
custody of prisoners, and he shall be ex-officio keeper of the 
jail or penitentiary of said district. He shall appoint four 
deputies, who shall reside severally at the towns of Sitka, 
Wrangell, Oonalashka and Juneau City, and they shall res- 



APPENDIX. 203 

pectively be ex-officio constables and executive officers of 
the commissioners' courts herein provided, and shall have 
the powers and discharge the duties of United States dep- 
uty marshals, and those of constables under the laws of the 
state of Oregon now in force. 

Section 7. That the general laws of the state of Oregon 
now in force are hereby declared to be the law in said dis- 
trict, so far as the same may be applicable and not in con- 
flict with the provisions of this act or the laws of the United 
States ; and the sentence of imprisonment in any criminal 
case shall be carried out by confinement in the jail or peni- 
tentiary hereinafter provided for. But the said district 
court shall have exclusive jurisdiction in all cases in equity 
or those involving a question of title to land, or mining 
rights, or the constitutionality of a law, and in all criminal 
offenses which are capital. In all civil cases at common 
law, any issue of fact shall be determined by a jury, at the 
instance of either party ; and an appeal shall lie in any case, 
civil or criminal, from the judgment of said commissioners 
to the said district court, where the amount involved in any 
civil case is two hundred dollars or more, and in any crim- 
inal case where a fine of more than one hundred dollars or 
imprisonment is imposed, upon the filing of a sufficient 
appeal bond by the party appealing, to be approved by the 
court or commissioner. Writs of error in criminal cases 
shall issue to the said district court from the United States 
circuit court for the district of Oregon in the cases provided 
in chapter one hundred and seventy-six of the laws of 
eighteen hundred and seventy-nine ; and the jurisdiction 
thereby conferred upon circuit courts is hereby given to the 
circuit court of Oregon. And the final judgments or de- 
crees of said circuit and district court may be reviewed by 
the supreme court of the United States as in other cases. 

Section 8. That the said district of Alaska is hereby 
created a land district, and a United States land office for 
said district is hereby located at Sitka. The commissioner 
provided for by this act to reside at Sitka shall be ex-officio 
register of said land office, and the clerk provided for by 
this act shall be ex-officio receiver of public moneys, and the 
marshal provided for by this act shall be surveyor-general 
of said district, and the laws of the United States relating 
to mining claims, and the rights incident thereto, shall, from 
and after the passage of this act, be in full force and effect 
in said district, under the administration thereof herein 
provided for, subject to such regulations as may be made 
by the Secretary of the Interior, approved by the President : 



204 OUR NEW ALASKA. 

Provided, That the Indians or other persons in said district 
shall not be disturbed in ,the possession of any lands, 
actually in their use or occupation or now claimed by them, 
but the terms under which such persons may acquire title to 
such lands is reserved for future legislation by Congress : 
And provided further, That parties who have located mines 
or mineral privileges therein under the laws of the United 
States applicable to the public domain, or who have occu- 
pied and improved or exercised acts of ownership over such 
claims, shall not be disturbed therein, but shall be allowed 
to perfect their title to such claims by payment as aforesaid : 
And provided also, That the land not exceeding six hundred 
and forty acres at any station now occupied as missionary 
stations among the Indian tribes in said section, with the 
improvements thereon erected by or for such societies, shall 
be continued in the occupancy of the several religious soci- 
eties to which said missionary stations respectively belong 
until action by Congress. But nothing contained in this 
act shall be construed to put in force in said district the 
general land laws of the United States. 

Section 9. That the governor, attorney, judge, marshal, 
clerk and commissioners provided for in this act shall be 
appointed by the President of the United States, by and 
with the advice and consent of the Senate, and shall hold 
their respective offices for the term of four years, and until 
their successors are appointed and qualified. They shall 
severally receive the fee of office established by law for 
the several offices the duties of which have been hereby 
conferred upon them, as the same are determined and 
allowed in respect of similar offices under the laws of the 
United States, which fees shall be reported to the attorney- 
general and paid into the Treasury of the United States. 
They shall receive respectively the following annual 
salaries : The governor, the sum of three thousand dollars ; 
the attorney, the sum of two thousand dollars ; the mar- 
shal, the sum of two thousand five hundred dollars ; the 
judge, the sum of three thousand dollars ; and the clerk, 
the sum of two thousand five hundred dollars, payable to 
them quarterly from the Treasury of the United States. 
The district judge, marshal and district attorney shall be 
paid their actual, necessary expenses when traveling in the 
discharge of their official duties. A detailed account shall 
be rendered of such expenses under oath, and as to the 
marshal and district attorney such account shall be 
approved by the judge, and as to his expenses by the 
attorney-general. The commissioners shall receive the 



APPENDIX. 205 

usual fees of United States commissioners and of justices 
of the peace for Oregon, and such fees for recording 
instruments as are allowed by the laws of Oregon for simi- 
lar services, and in addition a salary of one thousand dol- 
lars each. The deputy marshals, in addition to the usual 
fees of constables in Oregon, shall receive each a salary 
of seven hundred and fifty dollars, which salaries shall 
also be payable quarterly out of the Treasury of the 
United States. Each of said officials shall, before entering 
on the duties of his office, take and subscribe an oath that 
he will faithfully execute the same, which said oath may be 
taken before the judge of said district or any United States 
district or circuit judge. That all officers appointed for 
said district, before entering upon the duties of their office, 
shall take the oaths required by law, and the laws of the 
United States, not locally inapplicable to said district and 
not inconsistent with the provisions Of this act are hereby 
extended thereto, but there shall be no legislative assembly 
in said district, nor shall any delegate be sent to Congress 
therefrom. And the said clerk shall execute a bond, with 
sufficient sureties, in the penalty of ten thousand dollars, 
for the faithful performance of his duties, and file the same 
with the Secretary of the Treasury before entering upon 
the duties of his office ; and the commissioners shall each 
execute a bond, with sufficient sureties, in the penalty of 
three thousand dollars, for the faithful performance of their 
duties, and file the same with the clerk before entering 
upon the duties of their office. 

Section 10. That any of the public buildings in said 
district not required for the customs service or military 
purposes shall be used for court rooms and offices of the 
civil government, and the Secretary of the Treasury is 
hereby directed to instruct and authorize the custodian of 
said buildings forthwith to make said repairs to the jail in 
the town of Sitka, in said district, as will render it suitable 
for a jail and penitentiary for the purpose of the civil gov- 
ernment hereby provided, and to surrender to the marshal 
the custody of said jail and the other public buildings, or 
such parts of said buildings as may be selected for court- 
rooms, offices and officials. 

Section ii. That the attorney-general is directed forth- 
with to compile and cause to be printed, in the English 
language, in pamphlet form, so much of the general laws 
of the United States as are applicable to the duties of the 
governor, attorney, judge, clerk, marshals and commission- 
ers appointed for said district, and shall furnish for the 



206 O UR NE W ALA SKA. 

use of the officers of the said territory so many copies as 
may be needed of the laws of Oregon applicable to said 
district. 

Section 12. That the Secretary of the Interior shall 
select two of the officers to be appointed under this act, 
who, together with the governor, shall constitute a commis- 
sion to examine into and report upon the condition of the 
Indians residing in said territory, what lands, if any, should 
be reserved for their use, what provision shall be made for 
their education, what rights by occupation of settlers should 
be recognized, and all other facts that may be necessary to 
enable Congress to determine what limitations may be im- 
posed when the land laws of the United States shall be 
extended to said district ; and to defray the expenses of 
said commission the sum of two thousand dollars is hereby 
appropriated out of any moneys in the treasury not other- 
wise appropriated, 

Section 13. That the Secretary of the Interior shall 
make needful and proper provision for the education of the 
children of school age in the Territory of Alaska, without 
reference to race, until such time as permanent provision 
shall be made for the same, and the sum of twenty-five 
thousand dollars, or so much thereof as may be necessary, 
is hereby appropriated for this purpose. 

Section 14. That the provision of chapter three, title 
twenty-three, of the Revised Statutes of the United States, 
relating to the unrecognized Territory of Alaska, shall 
remain in full force, except as herein specially otherwise 
provided ; and the importation, manufacture and sale of 
intoxicating liquors in said district except for medicinal, 
mechanical and scientific purposes, is hereby prohibited 
under the penalties which are provided in section nineteen 
hundred and fifty-five of the revised statutes for the 
wrongful importation of distilled spirits. And the Presi- 
dent of the United States shall make such regulations as 
are necessary to carry out the provisions of this section. 

Approved, May, 17, 1884. 



APPENDIX B. 

PACIFIC COAST EXCURSIONS. 

The following round trip excursion rates will hereafter 
be made from St. Paul, Minneapolis, Duluth, Superior, 
Fargo, or intermediate points east of Fargo, to Portland : 



In parties of 10, each. . 


.$165.00 


In parties of 35, each. . . .$130.00 


" 15. " •• 


. . 160.00 


" "40, " ... 120.00 


" " 20, " .. 


. 155. oo> 


" " 45, " . . .. 110.00 


" 25, " .. 


. 150.00 


"50 or more, 


" 30, " •• 


. 140.00 


each 100.00 



For excursion rates to Tacoma and return, add to above 
rates $4.00 

For excursion rates to Victoria and return, add to above 
rates $10.00 

For excursion rates to Sitka, Alaska, and return, add to 
above rates $95.00. 

Opportunity given on above tickets to stop over at all 
points of interest, including Livingston, for a side trip 
through the Yellowstone National Park, Lake Pend d'Oreille, 
and the tourists and sportsmen's resorts in the park 
regions of Minnesota. 



PRICE OF TICKETS TO ALASKA AND RETURN. 

INCLUDING BERTH AND MEALS ON STEAMER. 

From San Francisco, via Victoria and Townsend, and 

returning same way $125 

" San Francisco, via Victoria, and returning via 

Tacoma, Portland and Columbia River 135 

" Portland, Oregon, via Astoria 100 

" " " via Tacoma & Port Townsend ) 

(N.P.R.R.toTacoma.andO.R.&M.Co.str.toPt.T'send) j 

" Port Townsend 90 

" Victoria, B. C 90 



208 OUR NEW ALA SKA . 



CALIFORNIA EXCURSIONISTS 

Can return via Portland, Oregon, and the Northern Pacific 
Railroad to St. Paul, Minneapolis, or Duluth, Minn., by 
paying the agent of the Pacific Coast Steamship Company, 
214 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, $15 for ticket, San 
Francisco to Portland, provided they hold an excursion 
ticket the return portion of which reads via the Northern 
Pacific Railroad. Should the return portion of the ticket 
read over one of the Southern lines, it will be exchanged on 
payment of $10 to return via the Northern Pacific on appli- 
cation to T. H. Goodman, General Passenger Agent of the 
Southern and Central Pacific Railroads, San Francisco, Cal. 
The same rule applies for excursionists reaching Portland 
via the Northern Pacific who may desire to return via San 
Francisco. The latter should apply to John J. Byrne, Gen- 
eral Passenger Agent O. R. & N. Co., Ash street dock, 
Portland, Oregon, for exchange of railroad ticket or special 
excursion ticket, Portland to San Francisco. 

Words of praise in commendation of the elegant steamers 
run by the Pacific Coast Steamship Company between Port- 
land and San Francisco are unnecessary, as their excellence 
is well known and appreciated by the traveling public. 

The rate of $15 referred to above includes stateroom and 
meals en route. Steamers leave Portland and San Francisco 
every five days. 



STEAMER DAYS. 

The demands of business have induced the Pacific. Coast 
Steamship Company to double their service to Alaska, and 
steamers now run twice a month instead of monthly, as 
heretofore. The sagacity of this movement is indicated by 
the fact that the summer excursion lists are rapidly filling 
months in advance of the days of sailing. Dates of depart- 
ure are herewith appended : — 



Steamer. 

Mexico 

Idaho 


Leaving Portland. 
May 28 June 25 July 23 Aug. 
" 14 " 11 " 9 
Leave Port Townsend. 


20 
6 


Sept. 


17 
3 


Mexico 
Idaho 


May 3-31 June 28 July 26 Aug. 
" 17 " 14 " 12 " 


2 3 
9 


Sept 
«< 


20 
6 



If larger steamers are at any time required by the exigen- 



APPENDIX. 209 

cies of trade, they will at once be substituted, though the 
above (the Mexico especially) are fine vessels. The North- 
ern Pacific Railroad Company has arranged that any of its 
agents in the East can secure accommodations for Alaska 
excursionists by telegraphing to the office at St. Paul; dia- 
grams, berth-lists, etc., furnished, and state rooms secured. 



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